bride from Paris to the English shores to the arms of Prince Charles,
embraced her warmly, entered into all her troubles, and both the English
King and Queen wrote letters pleading in her behalf, to Louis XIII.,
Anne of Austria, and Richelieu with regard to the restoration of her
property and permission to rejoin her children at Dampierre. She herself
resumed the links of a negotiation with the Cardinal which had never
been entirely broken off, and the success of which seemed quite
practicable, since it was almost equally desired by both. That
negotiation was being carried on for more than a year, and when link
after link had been frequently snapped and re-soldered, only to be once
more broken, Richelieu at length gave his solemn word that she might
return with perfect safety to Dampierre.

On the eve of her departure from the English Court, a vessel being in
readiness to convey her to Dieppe, where a carriage awaited her landing,
the Duchess received an anonymous letter warning her that certain ruin
awaited her if she set foot on the soil of France, followed by another,
still more explicit with regard to Richelieu's designs to effect her
destruction, from no less a person than Charles of Lorraine. This second
warning from so reliable a source, followed shortly afterwards by other
advice--held by her in the light of a command--enchained her to a
foreign land. She for whom during ten long years the Duchess had
suffered all things, braved all things, her august friend Anne of
Austria cautioned her not to trust to appearances. Thus vanished the
last hope of a sincere reconciliation between two persons who knew each
other too well to discard distrust and to confide in words, of which
neither were sparing, without requiring solemn guarantees that they
could not or would not give.

Choosing stoically, therefore, to still undergo the pangs of absence, to
consume the noontide of the days of her attractive womanhood in
privation and turmoil rather than risk her liberty, Mdme. de Chevreuse
on her part did not remain idle. From the moment she felt convinced that
Richelieu was deceiving her, attracting her back to France only to hold
her in a state of dependence, and if need were, to incarcerate
her--having broken with him, she considered herself as free from all
scruple, and thought of nothing further than paying him back blow for
blow. Her old duel with the Cardinal thus once more renewed, she formed
in London, with the aid of t