Unfortunately, alike for Marie de Medicis and Gaston d'Orléans, the amiable Infanta, who had proved so patient as well as so munificent a host--and who had, without murmur or reproach, seen her previously tranquil and pious Court changed by the dissipation and cabals of her foreign guests into a perpetual arena of strife and even bloodshed--the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, whose very name was reverenced throughout the whole of the Low Countries, expired on the 1st of December at the age of sixty-eight, after having governed Flanders during thirty-five years. This event was a source of alarm as well as of sorrow to the royal exiles, who could not anticipate an equal amount of forbearance from the Marquis d'Ayetona,[202] by whom she was provisionally replaced in the government; and who had long and loudly expressed his disgust at the perpetual feuds which convulsed the circles of the Queen-mother and her son, and declared that they had caused him more annoyance than all the subjects of the King his master in the Low Countries.[203] In this extremity both Marie and Monsieur became more than ever anxious to procure their recall to France; and Gaston soon succeeded in ascertaining the conditions upon which his pardon was to be accorded. Letters of abolition were to be granted for his past revolt: his several appanages were to be restored to him: the sum of seven hundred thousand crowns were to be paid over to meet his immediate exigences: he was to be invested with the government of Auvergne, and to have, as a bodyguard, a troop of gendarmes and light-horse, of which the command was to be conferred upon Puylaurens, to whom the offer of a dukedom was renewed; and, in the event of Monsieur declining to reside at Court, he was to be at liberty to fix his abode either in Auvergne or in Bourbonnais, as he saw fit; while, in any and every case, he was to live according to his own pleasure alike in Paris or the provinces. And--in return for this indulgence--Monsieur was simply required to abandon his brother-in-law Charles de Lorraine to the vengeance of the King, without attempting any interference in his behalf; to detach himself wholly and unreservedly from all his late friends and adherents both within and without the kingdom of France; to resign all alliance either personal or political with the Queen-mother; to be guided in every circumstance by the counsels of the Cardinal-Minister; and to give the most stringent securities for his future loyalty. Such were the conditions to which the heir-presumptive to the Crown of France ultimately consented to affix his name, although for a time he affected to consider them as unworthy of his dignity; and meanwhile as the year drew to a close, a mutual jealousy had grown up between the mother and son which seconded all the views of Richelieu, whose principal aim was to prevent the return of either to France for as long a period as he could succeed in so doing. FOOTNOTES: