Gaston attempted no reply to this impassioned address, but it did not fail to produce its effect; and on returning to his own apartments he withdrew the consent which Puylaurens had extorted from him. The favourite, convinced that the answer of the Queen-mother had been dictated by Chanteloupe, hurried to her residence, insulted and menaced the Jesuit whom he encountered in an ante-room, and forcing himself into the chamber of Marie de Medicis, accused her in the most disrespectful terms of endeavouring to perpetuate the dissension of the King and his brother, in order to gratify her emnity towards Richelieu. "Never," exclaimed the Queen-mother, quivering with indignation, "did even my enemy the Cardinal thus fail in respect towards me! He was far from daring to address me with such an amount of insolence as this. Learn that should I see fit to say a single word, and to receive him again into favour, I could overthrow all your projects. Leave the room, young madman, or I will have you flung from the windows. It is easy to perceive that your nature is as mean as your birth." [201] Puylaurens retired; but thenceforward the existence of the Queen-mother became one unbroken tissue of mortification and suffering; and so bitterly did she feel the degradations to which she was hourly exposed, that she at length resolved to despatch one of the gentlemen of her household to the King, to ascertain if she could obtain the royal permission to return to France upon such terms as she should be enabled to concede. In the letter which she addressed to her son she touchingly complained of the indignities to which she was subjected by Monsieur and his favourite, and implored his Majesty to extricate her from a position against which she was unable to contend. In his reply Louis assured her that he much regretted to learn that the Duc d'Orléans had been wanting in respect towards her person, but reminded her that such could never have been the case had she followed his own advice and that of his faithful servants; and terminated his missive by an intimation that in the event of her placing in his power all her evil counsellors, in order that he might punish them as they deserved, and of her also pledging herself to love, as she ought to do, the good servants of the Crown, he might then believe that she was no longer so ill-disposed as she had been when she left France. The disappointed Queen-mother at once recognized the hand of the Cardinal in this cold and constrained despatch, which was merely a renewal of her sentence of banishment; as Richelieu well knew that the high heart and generous spirit of the Tuscan Princess would revolt at the enormity of sacrificing those who had clung to her throughout her evil fortunes, in order to secure her own impunity.