Volume I Part 24 (1/2)

It was soon evident, however, that M. de Conde was by no means prepared to lend-himself to the licentious views of the King, and he maintained so strict a guard over his beautiful young wife that neither sarcasm nor reproach could induce him to relax his vigilance. This opposition only served to aggravate the unhappy pa.s.sion of the monarch, while the indignation of the Prince and the anger of the Queen were, although from a different motive, similarly excited; and in the month of July, during the festivities which took place on the marriage of the Duc de Vendome with Mademoiselle de Mercoeur, the advances of the monarch to the wife of his nephew became so undisguised that the latter openly resented so great an insult to his honour; a crime for which he was immediately punished by the revocation of all the grants made to him on the occasion of his marriage, and he was thus reduced to comparative poverty.[402]

This extreme and wanton severity produced a diametrically opposite effect to that which had been antic.i.p.ated by the King, the Prince instantly feeling that he had been wronged as well as insulted; while the Queen, alarmed by the evident progress of this new and fatal pa.s.sion, which must, should it ultimately prove successful, overwhelm the monarch with disgrace and remorse from the near consanguinity of the parties, did not fail to urge upon M. de Conde in the most energetic manner the necessity of preserving alike his own honour and that of the King by removing his wife from the Court. This advice found support on all sides, as those who made it a matter of conscience trembled at the idea of the scandal which must ensue; while others, who merely sought to annoy the sovereign without any regard for his reputation, still saw their purpose answered by the proposed departure of the Princess.

Difficult as it was for the Prince to consent to a separation from his beautiful young bride, the perseverance of Henry soon convinced him that he had no other alternative, and he accordingly caused her to quit the capital, and to take up her temporary abode at Saint-Valery; but the remonstrances of the monarch were so earnest, and he succeeded so thoroughly in concealing his indignation against M. de Conde personally, that for a time he flattered himself that he should be enabled to effect her recall. Upon this point, however, the Prince was firm; and as day after day went by without eliciting the obedience which he had antic.i.p.ated, the entreaties of the King were exchanged for threats. Nor did Henry rest satisfied even with this show of displeasure towards his young kinsman, for, resolved to ascertain if he should not be more favourably received by the Princess herself, he a.s.sumed a disguise, and proceeded with a few attendants to the place of her retreat in order to obtain an interview. On ascertaining this fact M. de Conde removed her to Muret, but the pursuit of the King was so resolute that the hara.s.sed bridegroom ultimately found himself compelled to choose between his ruin and his dishonour.[403]

His first measure was to change the residence of the Princess from Saint-Valery to his chateau at Breteuil, and to expostulate with her upon the encouragement which she gave by her levity to the advances of the monarch; but as some time pa.s.sed without any further cause for alarm, the Prince at length began to feel greater confidence, and in the month of November joined a hunting expedition which compelled him to absent himself from his wife, a circ.u.mstance that was forthwith communicated to Henry, who immediately a.s.sumed a second disguise and proceeded to Breteuil. M. de Conde had, however, been careful to establish a strict watch over his household, and being apprised in his turn of the royal visit, he suddenly returned, and the disappointed monarch was compelled to leave the chateau.

Madame de Verneuil, to whom the adventure was soon made known, and who, despite the extreme precariousness of her position, never failed to revenge herself upon the King whenever an opportunity presented itself, related the whole story in his presence during a Court reception, only suppressing the name of the adventurous lover; an indiscretion which so offended and alarmed the Prince that he determined to emanc.i.p.ate himself from the threatened disgrace.[404]

He felt that he had but one alternative, for he was too high-spirited to condescend to disgrace, whatever might be the penalty of his resistance; and driven at length to an expedient which wounded his pride, but which he found it impossible to reject, he affected to be determined by the anger of the monarch, and requested permission to go in person to conduct the Princess back to Court. This was instantly and joyfully conceded, and M. de Conde no sooner found himself free to act than he set forth; but, instead of returning to Paris as Henry had anxiously antic.i.p.ated, he took the precaution to have relays of post-horses secretly secured all along the road to the Low Countries.[405]

On his arrival at Muret the Prince lost not a moment in causing the Princess to enter a carriage drawn by eight horses which he had provided for the purpose, and at once proceeded to Flanders by way of Artois. The dread of dishonour, coupled with the fear of arrest upon the road, lent wings to his speed; and without once alighting the Prince and his fair companion reached Landrecies;[406] the entire suite of the first Prince and Princess of the Blood comprising on this occasion only Messieurs de Rochefort and de Tournay, and Mademoiselle de Certeau, with a valet and a femme-de-chambre, who followed on horseback.

The news of their flight reached Fontainebleau on the following evening, while the Queen was still convalescent (having given birth to her third and last daughter, Henriette Marie, on the 26th of November), and the King was endeavouring to employ the interval which must ensue before the arrival of the Princess by pursuing with renewed ardour his favourite pastime. Pimentello, the hated of Sully, had returned to Court, and the play was consequently ”fast and furious.” It was in the very height of this maddening excitement, when he was surrounded by piles of gold, and devotees as earnest as himself at the same shrine discreetly a.s.sembled in his private closet, that Henry, whose spirits were exalted by his hopes, and who was risking sum after sum with a recklessness which would have taken away the breath of his finance minister, received from M.

d'Elbene,[407] and subsequently from his lieutenant of police, the important and mortifying intelligence that his destined prey had escaped him. The agitation which the King exhibited when convinced of the truth of this report exceeded any that he had hitherto evinced even upon the most important occasions, and hastily rising from the table, he murmured in the ear of Ba.s.sompierre who was seated next to him, ”Ah! my friend, I am lost. The man has taken his wife into the depths of a forest. I know not if it be to escape with her from France, or to put her to death.

Take care of my money, and keep up the play until I have procured more certain and detailed information.” [408]

From his closet Henry proceeded to the last place on earth which might, under the circ.u.mstances, have been antic.i.p.ated. He went straight to the chamber of the Queen, where her Majesty was still unable to leave her bed, and there he gave full scope to the anguish under which he was labouring. ”Never,” says Ba.s.sompierre, ”did I see a man so lost or so overcome.” In the room were also a.s.sembled the Marquis de Coeuvres,[409]

the Comte de Cramail, and MM. d'Elbene and de Lomenie, with whom he unscrupulously discussed, in the presence of his outraged wife, the readiest means of compelling the immediate return of the fugitives. As may naturally be antic.i.p.ated, the advice likely to prove the most flattering to his wishes was offered on all sides, and a thousand expedients were suggested and discussed only to be found unfeasible, until the King, in despair, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, resolved upon summoning his ministers. Accordingly MM. de Sillery, de Villeroy, de Jeannin, and de Sully soon joined the party, which had, moreover, been augmented by the presence of several of the most confidential friends of the monarch, among others by De Gevres,[410] De la Force,[411] and La Varenne; and once more the King sought a solution of the difficulty. Here, however, the judgment and policy of the several councillors differed upon every point. The Chancellor gave it as his opinion that a strong declaration should be made against the step taken by the Prince himself, and another equally stringent against those by whom he should be aided and abetted in his evasion; M. de Villeroy advised that despatches should forthwith be forwarded to the several amba.s.sadors of the French King at foreign Courts to warn the sovereigns of those states against receiving the fugitive Prince within their territories, and to exhort them to take measures for enforcing his return to France; M. de Jeannin declared that the most expeditious method of compelling obedience, and forestalling the inconvenience and scandal of the self-expatriation of the first Prince of the Blood, would be to cause him to be immediately followed by a captain of the bodyguard, instructed to expostulate with him on his disloyalty and imprudence, and to threaten instant war against any state by whom he should be harboured; while when Sully at length spoke it was only to deprecate each and all of these measures, by which he insisted that the monarch would give an importance to the departure of the Prince that his enemies would but too gladly turn to their own account; whereas, if he made no comment upon the flight of M. de Conde, and treated it as a matter without importance, he would at once render him insignificant in the eyes of those sovereigns who would fain look upon him as a martyr, and use him as a means to hara.s.s and annoy his own monarch.

Henry was, however, too much excited to defer to the sober reasonings of his finance minister, and declared that he would suffer no petty prince to harbour the first n.o.ble of his kingdom without resenting so gross an affront. The advice of Jeannin suited his views far better, and he accordingly despatched M. de Praslin on the following day to Landrecies with a peremptory order for the return of the fugitives. His messenger was met by a firm refusal on the part of the Prince; upon which, finding that his expostulations were of no avail, he proceeded, as he had been ordered, to Brussels, where, in an interview with the Archduke Albert,[412] he delivered to him the message of his sovereign, and explained the danger of the position in which he would personally be placed should he venture to oppose the royal will.

This intelligence greatly embarra.s.sed the Archduke, who had already given to M. de Rochefort an a.s.surance of the readiness with which he would offer an asylum to the princely fugitives; but as M. de Praslin continued to press upon him the certain indignation of the French monarch should he venture to receive them at his Court, his previous resolution gave way; and he hastened to despatch a messenger to Landrecies to decline the honour proffered to him by M. de Conde, but at the same time to a.s.sure him of a safe pa.s.sage through his territories.

On the receipt of this unexpected prohibition the self-exiled Prince, who had gone too far to recede, had no other alternative than to proceed through the duchy of Juliers to Cologne; in which, being a free city, and perfectly neuter in the affairs of France and Spain, the chief magistrate granted him permission to reside.

Although the Prince de Conde had been refused a retreat in Flanders, the Archduke willingly yielded to the request of the Princess that she might be permitted to reside for a time in Brussels, until the final abode of her husband should be decided; and she accordingly arrived in that city under his escort, where the ill.u.s.trious couple were received with great ceremony and cordiality by the Papal Nuncio and the other dignitaries of the town. Their arrival was no sooner known than Philip of Orange and his Princess (the sister of M. de Conde) hastened from Breda to welcome them; and they were followed a few days afterwards by the Archduke and Archd.u.c.h.ess, by whom the royal fugitives were entertained with all the honour due to their exalted rank, and their unmerited misfortunes. The Prince then took his departure for Cologne, while the fair cause of his flight remained in the Flemish capital under the protection of her new friends.

Marie de Medicis had, meanwhile, no sooner ascertained that the emba.s.sy of M. de Praslin had been successful, and that the self-expatriated pair had been denied a refuge in the Low Countries, than she addressed a letter to the Marquis de Spinola, entreating him to cause a revocation of the denial, and representing how entirely her domestic peace depended upon the absence of the Princesse de Conde; an absence which could not fail to be abridged by the necessity of residing in a city like Cologne, where the ardent spirit of the Prince could not but revolt at the tedium around him. The effect of her appeal was all that she had antic.i.p.ated, strengthening as it did the preconceived measures of the confidential minister of Philip III, who hastened to represent to that monarch the gross error into which the Archduke had fallen, and the favourable opportunity which he had thus lost of retorting upon Henry the protection that he had accorded to Don Antonio Perez, a traitor to his sovereign and to his country; and of securing to the Court of Spain the advantage which it must have derived from having in its power, and securing to its interests, the first Prince of the Blood in France. His arguments proved conclusive, the jealousy of Philip always prompting him to lend a willing ear to every project by which he might be enabled to accomplish any triumph over the French monarch; and accordingly instructions were forwarded to the Archduke to repair his fault without delay, by inviting the Prince to rejoin his bride at Brussels. Little as the sovereign of the Low Countries was disposed to involve himself in a war with France, he did not hesitate to comply with the injunction. He placed so firm a reliance on the support of Spain in the event of hostilities, and had been so long accustomed to conform to her counsels, that he immediately made known to M. de Conde his change of resolution, and declared himself ready to receive him whenever he should see fit to return to his territories; while at the same time he wrote to apprise the French King of what he had done, a.s.suring him that the permission granted to the fugitive Prince involved no want of respect for himself or of deference to his wishes, but had been accorded in the full persuasion of his ultimate approval.

The Spanish minister also despatched a messenger to the Prince, declaring that he was at liberty to take up his abode in the Low Countries, where he would be treated in a manner worthy of his birth and dignity, and, under the protection of the King his master, be a.s.sured of safety and respect. M, de Conde gladly availed himself of this permission, and a short time subsequently established himself in the palace of his sister, the Princess of Orange.

Enraged at this open violation of his wishes, and still reluctant to commence a war which he was conscious would rather owe its origin to private feeling than to national expediency, Henry resolved, as a last resource, to invest M. de Coeuvres with full powers to treat with the revolted Prince; and for this purpose he furnished him with an autograph letter, in which he a.s.sured the fugitive of an unreserved pardon in the event of his immediate return to France; but threatened, should he persist in his contumacy, to declare him guilty of the crime of _lese-majeste._ M. de Conde simply replied to this missive by a declaration of his innocence, and his respect for the person of the King, and by protesting against all that might be done to prejudice his interests; nor did the interviews which took place between himself and the royal envoy prove more satisfactory, although the Marquis exerted all his eloquence to induce him to comply with the will of the sovereign. Moreover, the letter of Henry, instead of exciting his confidence, had rendered the Prince more suspicious than ever of the designs of the monarch; and he accordingly left Brussels, where he no longer considered himself safe, at the end of February (1610), and took refuge at Milan with the Conde de Fuentes, the governor of that city.

More than one rumour had meanwhile reached the Archd.u.c.h.ess that Madame de Conde was by no means so indifferent to the degrading pa.s.sion of the King as was befitting to her honour, and the Princess was accordingly soon made sensible that her sojourn at Brussels had degenerated into a species of ceremonious imprisonment. Naturally vain and volatile, dazzled by the consciousness that she had become a sort of heroine, and moreover saddened by her memories of the brilliant existence from which she had been so suddenly shut out, the widowed bride would gladly have followed her husband to the gayer city of Milan, even wounded as she was by his indifference and coldness, rather than remain at the austere Court of the pious Infanta, where she was aware that her words and actions were subjected to the closest scrutiny; but the will of her father compelled her to remain at Brussels, the Connetable being apprehensive, from the marked neglect and suspicion evinced towards her by the Prince, that this latter might endeavour to remove her beyond the reach of her friends in order to hold her more completely in his power.

Under this impression her father had consequently insisted upon her residence at the Archducal Court, and had instructed her to solicit the influence of the Infanta, and to employ every means in her own power, to prevent M. de Conde from effecting her removal in the event of his finding it himself expedient to leave Flanders.

Not satisfied with this precaution, moreover, M. de Montmorency also demanded an audience of the King, in which he laid before him the apprehensions that he entertained; and finally he entreated his Majesty's permission to compel his daughter to return to France, and to take up her residence with the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, her aunt.

Henry made a ready and gracious reply to this request, and before he finally retired from the royal closet, the Connetable asked and obtained the royal sanction to authorize the Marquis de Coeuvres to concert with him some scheme for carrying off the Princess.

M. de Coeuvres had no sooner received these instructions than he admitted to his confidence Madame de Berny, the wife of the French Amba.s.sador at the Flemish Court (who from political reasons was himself kept in ignorance of the plot), and M. de Chateauneuf,[413] who was at that period residing in Brussels on a special mission from his Government; and the quasi-conspirators were not long ere they flattered themselves that their success was certain.

Near the palace of the Prince of Orange, in which Madame de Conde had taken up her residence, was a breach in the city wall by which it was easy to descend into the moat; and it was decided that the Princess should effect her escape from this point during the night. Saddled horses were to be prepared for herself and her retinue near the outer bank of the ditch, and nothing remained undecided save the moment of her evasion. She was to proceed at all speed to Pontarme, where a relay of fresh horses and an armed escort were to await her arrival, and similar arrangements were to be made throughout the whole of the route to Rocroy. Finally, the precise night of her flight was decided on; and this had no sooner been determined than M. de Coeuvres despatched a courier to the Connetable, informing him that there now remained no doubt of the immediate return of the Princess to his protection.

This intelligence reached Paris on the Wednesday, and the following Sat.u.r.day was the period fixed for the projected evasion, a fact which M.

de Montmorency had no sooner ascertained than he hastened to communicate the success of M. de Coeuvres to the King. Henry was overjoyed, and in the fulness of his satisfaction was guilty of an indiscretion which was fated to overthrow his hopes; for, believing that in so short a time no effectual measures could be taken to frustrate the plot, he was incautious enough to confide the whole conspiracy to the Queen, who was still an invalid, not having yet recovered from the birth of her third daughter.[414] Agitated and alarmed, Marie listened to the narrative with an earnest attention, which only tended to render her royal consort more communicative than he might otherwise have been; and, in the excess of his self-gratulation, he moreover exhibited such unequivocal proofs of the interest which he personally felt in the result of the evasion, that she at once resolved to prevent the reappearance of the Princess in France. The King had accordingly no sooner quitted her apartment than she desired Madame Concini to bring her kinsman the Nuncio Ubaldini to her private closet without losing an instant, a command which was so zealously obeyed by her favourite that she was enabled, after a prolonged conference with this ecclesiastic, to despatch a courier secretly to Spinola the same night to acquaint him with the projected design, and to entreat him to frustrate it should there yet be time.

The royal messenger travelled so rapidly that he reached Brussels at eleven o'clock on the morning of Sat.u.r.day, and Spinola had no sooner read the despatch than he hastened to communicate its contents to the Archduke and the Infanta, who instantly sent a company of the light horse of the bodyguard to possess themselves of all the approaches to the palace of the Prince of Orange. This done, their Imperial Highnesses next caused several state carriages to be prepared, which were placed under the charge of one of the princ.i.p.al officers of their household, who received directions to invite Madame de Conde in their joint names to take immediate possession of a suite of rooms in the Archducal palace which they desired to appropriate to her use and that of her suite, as better suited to the dignity of her high rank than those which she then inhabited. He was, moreover, instructed to accept no denial, but to insist upon the compliance of the Princess; and thus armed the courtier proceeded to the Hotel d'Orange, where he communicated the subject of his mission to Madame de Conde in the presence of her two confidants.