THE LOVE-AFFAIRS OF THE
CONDÉS

Héliogr. Chauvet

Imp. Eudes

Agnès Berthelot de Pléneuf,
Marquise de Prie.

Plon-Nourrit & C^ie Edit.]

THE LOVE-AFFAIRS
OF THE CONDÉS
(1530–1740)

BY

H. NOEL WILLIAMS

AUTHOR OF
“A PRINCESS OF ADVENTURE”

WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1912

TO
MY WIFE

PREFATORY NOTE

The principal authorities, both contemporary and modern, which I have consulted in the preparation of this volume are mentioned either in the text or the footnotes. I desire, however, to acknowledge my obligations to the following works by modern writers: Duc d’Aumale, “Histoire des Princes de Condé;” M. Édouard Barthélemy, “La Princesse de Condé: Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille;” M. Henri Bouchot, “Les Femmes de Brantôme;” Victor Cousin, “La Jeunesse de Madame de Longueville;” Comte Jules Delaborde, “Éléonore de Roye, Princesse de Condé (1535–1564);” M. I. Henrard, “Henri IV. et la Princesse de Condé;” MM. Homberg and Jousselin, “La Femme du Grand Condé;” Comte Hector de la Ferrière, “Trois Amoureuses au XVI^e siècle;” and M. H. Thirion, “Madame de Prie (1698–1727).”

H. NOEL WILLIAMS.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE
LOVE-AFFAIRS OF THE CONDÉS

CHAPTER I

Origin of the House of Condé—Louis de Bourbon, first prince of the name—His modest début at the Court—His personal appearance and character—Enmity between the Bourbons and the Guises—Condé attaches himself to the party of the Connétable Anne de Montmorency, and marries the latter’s niece, Éléonore de Roye—Noble character of Éléonore—Gallantries of Condé—His early military career—Death of Henry II.—Progress of the Reformation in France—Condé embraces Protestantism and places himself at the head of the opposition to the Guises—He is arrested at Orléans, brought to trial for high treason and condemned to death—But is saved by the opportune death of François II.

The Condés and the Bourbons have a common origin. Both families descend from Robert de France, Comte de Clermont, youngest son of St. Louis. An ancient barony, the inheritance of that prince’s wife, was erected into a dukedom in favour of Louis, his son, and gave to his descendants the name which they have retained, that of France being reserved for the royal branch.

After the death, without issue, of the Connétable de Bourbon at the assault of Rome in May 1527, his brother, Charles, Duc de Vendôme, became first Prince of the Blood, though, owing to the profound mistrust with which François I. now regarded the Bourbons, he never acquired either the authority or influence that so high a position ought to have given him. Nor did he succeed in recovering any of the vast possessions of the Constable, which were definitely alienated from his House, and, on his death in 1538, he left but a scanty fortune. This was the more regrettable, since his wife, Françoise d’Alençon, had borne him no less than thirteen children: seven sons and six daughters. Of the daughters, four entered religion; one died unmarried, and the last became the wife of François de Clèves, Duc de Nevers. Of the sons, five lived to attain their majority, though only one survived middle-age and died a natural death, and he was in holy orders. They were:

1. Antoine, Duc de Vendôme, born 22 April, 1518; became, through his marriage with Jeanne d’Albret, King of Navarre; died 17 November, 1562, from the effects of a wound received at the siege of Rouen.

2. François, Comte d’Enghien, born 23 September, 1519; commanded the French army in the great victory of Ceresole, 14 April, 1544; died 23 February, 1546, from the result of what was probably an accident, but was by many attributed to deliberate intent.[1]

3. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon (“le cardinal des bouteilles”), who was proclaimed King of France by the League after the death of Henri III.); born 22 December, 1523; died 9 May, 1590.

4. Jean, Comte de Soissons, and, after the death of his brother François, Comte d’Enghien; born 6 July, 1526; killed at the battle of Saint-Quentin, 15 August, 1557.

5. Louis, Prince de Condé, born at the Château of Vendôme, 7 May, 1530; killed at the battle of Jarnac, 13 March, 1569.

Two of these princes married and founded families: Antoine, who was the father of Henri IV., and the ancestor of all the Bourbons now living, and Louis, who was the root of the House of Condé and all its branches.

Louis, the youngest brother, was only in his eighth year at the time of his father’s death. Of his boyhood nothing whatever is known, though, as his widowed mother, who lived in strict retirement, was scarcely the person best fitted to superintend that chivalrous education which was deemed indispensable for a lad of high birth, it is probable that he was brought up by his brother-in-law, the Duc de Nevers, or some other male relative. The earliest recorded mention of him occurs in the Domestic Roll of Henri II. for the year 1549, where he appears under the name of “Louis M^r de Vendôme, gentleman of the chamber to the King, at a salary of 1200 livres.”

The precise time and occasion of his assuming the title which he and his descendants were to render so illustrious are likewise involved in obscurity. The Duc d’Aumale asserts that the earliest official document in which it is given, is in the procès-verbal of the Bed of Justice held on 15 January, 1557;[2] but since the duke wrote it has been discovered that he is thus qualified in at least half-a-dozen other deeds previous to that date, the earliest being an acte seigneurial of 30 March, 1553; while Henri II., in a letter to the Duc de Nevers written on 12 June, 1554, refers to the duke’s youngest brother-in-law as “My cousin, the Prince de Condé.”[3]

Equal uncertainty prevails as to whether he derived the title from Condé-sur-l’Escaut or Condé-en-Brie, both of which lordships seem to have been owned by his father, Charles, Duc de Vendôme. “The best known of the chroniclers of the family, Désormeaux,” observes the Duc d’Aumale, “declares it to be beyond all doubt that the first prince derived his name from Condé-en-Brie.” Indeed, in the marriage-contract of Louis I., the lordship of Condé-en-Brie appears in the list of the prince’s possessions. He owned a château there, at which he often resided, and executed various deeds, whereas there is no official document relating to him known to exist in which any mention is made of Condé-sur-l’Escaut. But another historian of the family, l’Hullier, who, though a tedious and very dull writer, has left in MS. many historical and genealogical memoirs, of which Désormeaux has often made use, declares himself in favour of Condé-sur-l’Escaut; and the Convention appeared to be of the same opinion, by its naming that place “Nord-libre.” The illustrious author modestly “leaves to more learned historians the task of solving the question,” but the majority of modern writers are inclined to favour the claims of Condé-sur-l’Escaut, though, apparently, for no better reason than because it is the more important of the two places.

Few Princes of the Blood have made a more modest début at the Court of France than the first of the Condés. Since the treason of the Connétable de Bourbon his family had fallen into a sort of discredit, and, though, in the last years of the previous reign, the partiality shown by François I. for the young Comte d’Enghien had seemed a promise of returning favour, the untimely death of the count, followed by that of the King, soon dissipated their hopes. When the head of the house, Antoine, Duc de Vendôme, was hard put to maintain a position in accordance with his rank, there was little enough for his younger brothers; and Louis de Bourbon made his appearance at Court so quietly dressed and with so modest a suite as to provoke no small merriment at his expense among the gorgeous butterflies of both sexes who adorned the salons of the Louvre and the gallery of the Tournelles.

Nor was there anything in the personal appearance of this youth of nineteen to suggest the great part that he was to play in after years. Unlike his ancestors, who had been tall men of imposing presence, he was short and slightly built, and some anecdote-mongers even represent him as hump-backed. Admitting however, that he may have been round-shouldered, the imputation of actual deformity is scarcely reconcilable with the well-known popular song concerning him:

“Ce petit homme tant jolly,

Qui toujours cause et toujours ry

Et toujours baise sa mignonne,

Dieu gard’ de mal le petit homme.”

Moreover, if somewhat diminutive in stature, he was “nimble and vigorous, and as adroit at martial exercises, both on foot and on horseback, as any man in France.”[4] His features, too, were pleasing without being regular, and illuminated by a pair of very bright eyes; he had excellent natural abilities, and had not neglected to cultivate them, being exceptionally well-informed and a good conversationalist, with a touch of sarcasm, which, however, his good-humour deprived of its sting, and “agreeable, accessible, and amiable.”[5]

The young prince was, therefore, not without qualifications to ensure advancement at Court, but in the two most essential—wealth and influence—he was conspicuously lacking. The absence of the first might have mattered little had he possessed the second, but the cloud under which the Bourbons had lain for a quarter of a century showed no sign of lifting. Henri II., who had ascended the throne two years before Condé’s arrival at Court, was a well-meaning man, who sincerely desired to do his duty and promote the interests of his subjects, but he was “born to be governed, rather than to govern,”[6] and was surrounded by ambitious and greedy favourites, who thought only of exploiting him for their own selfish ends. In the early days of the new reign, the favour of the King had been divided between his mature mistress, Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois, and his old friend, the Connétable Anne de Montmorency, who, disgraced by François I. in 1543, had, on the death of that monarch, been recalled to Court and entrusted with the direction of affairs. Diane, however, jealous of the influence of the Constable, formed an alliance with the Guises, those able and ambitious Lorraine princes who were to play so conspicuous a part in all the troubles of the latter half of the sixteenth century; François de Lorraine, who succeeded his father as Duc de Guise in the spring of 1550, and his brother, Charles, the second Cardinal de Lorraine, became two of the King’s most trusted advisers; and they and their younger brothers were loaded with honours and benefits. Henri II.’s favourites stood like a bodyguard around the throne to prevent any one else approaching it; their greed was insatiable; “estates, dignities, bishoprics, abbeys, offices, no more escaped them than do the flies the swallow; there was not a choice morsel that was not snapped up in a moment.”[7]

For the Bourbons to have attempted to break through this bodyguard and insinuate themselves into the good graces of their Sovereign would have been a hopeless task; and they soon recognized that their only chance of bettering their fallen fortunes was to follow the example of the other courtiers and attach themselves to one or other of the favourites who governed the King, in the hope that some scraps of the royal bounty might be passed on to them. From the party of Diane de Poitiers and the Guises they had nothing to expect, for, though the two families were closely connected,[8] their relations were exceedingly strained. In both Court and camp their paths crossed; and the sinister rumours to which the death of the young victor of Ceresole had given rise is an eloquent testimony to the jealousy which existed between them. Since the death of François I., who had regarded the Guises with profound mistrust, and in his last hours had warned his son to be on his guard against them, since “their aim was to strip him to his doublet, and his people to their shirts,”[9] the Lorraines had plainly shown their determination to keep the Bourbons in the background, and not content with enjoying the privileges of foreign princes, had profited by the impotence of their kinsmen to usurp those of the Princes of the Blood.

Policy and inclination therefore both prompted the Bourbons to attach themselves to the opposition, or Montmorency faction. This party, though it attracted to its ranks fewer of the Court nobility than did that of the Duchesse de Valentinois and the Guises, was supported by the bulk of the provincial noblesse, and Montmorency’s great wealth and official position—he was Grand Master of the King’s Household as well as Constable of France—enabled him to dispense extensive patronage. He had five sons and seven daughters, besides numerous nephews and nieces, and he did his duty nobly by them all, and allowed no opportunity to pass of advancing the importance of his family and enriching his relatives and friends. Condé, more ambitious than his brothers, determined to establish claims on the great man’s favour which it would be difficult for him to overlook, and, towards the end of the year 1550, demanded in marriage the hand of Éléonore de Roye, eldest daughter and heiress of Charles, Seigneur de Roye and de Muret, Comte de Roney, an alliance which would unite him with the two great Houses of Montmorency and Châtillon. For Éléonore de Roye’s mother, Madeleine de Mailly, was the daughter of Louise de Montmorency, sister of the Constable;[10] and Louise de Montmorency, by her second marriage with the Maréchal de Châtillon, was the mother of the future Admiral, Gaspard de Coligny, and of his two brothers, Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon, and François, Seigneur d’Andelot.

The consent of the young lady’s parents was readily given. They could not, indeed, fail to be flattered by such a proposal from a Prince of the Blood, besides which they felt that this young man, frank, brave, chivalrous, and amiable, was a husband of whom any girl might well be proud, and ought to have a brilliant future before him. It is possible that the rumours of their prospective son-in-law’s addiction to feminine society which had reached them may have occasioned them some misgivings; but Gaspard de Coligny, who had negotiated the affair, assured them that marriage would change all that, and that he had no doubt that, once in possession of the prince’s affections, Éléonore would be able to fix them permanently. This, in view of what we shall presently relate, seems a decidedly bold assertion; but then Coligny, the most faithful of husbands, was generously inclined to judge others by himself; while the political advantages of a match which would unite the Houses of Montmorency, Bourbon and Châtillon, and counterbalance the exorbitant credit of the Guises, may well have disposed him to regard the young prince’s gallantries with a lenient eye.

After being accepted by the Comte and Comtesse de Roye, the project was submitted to the Constable, who was graciously pleased to approve of it, and promised to obtain the sanction of the King. This proved far from an easy task, as Diane de Poitiers and the Guises did everything possible to persuade his Majesty to refuse his consent; but, in the end, Montmorency triumphed over their opposition, and on June 22, 1551, the marriage was celebrated at the Château of Plessis-lès-Roye, by the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bridegroom’s uncle.

This marriage added little to Condé’s fortune, but it brought him “an inexhaustible treasure of affection and devotion.” “If ever, in fact,” writes an enthusiastic biographer, “a young girl, pure and loving, entered married life with the energetic resolution to consecrate all the living forces of her soul to the practice of the most holy duties, and raised herself by her piety and her virtues, by the generosity of her soul and the heroism of her character, to the rank of a femme d’élite, it was this incomparable Éléonore de Roye, who, from the day of her union with Louis de Bourbon, became for this prince, and remained up to the day when she succumbed prematurely to the cruel attacks of disease, a tender and submissive companion, a faithful friend, an immovable support in time of trial.”[11]

Amidst that band of noble Huguenot ladies, who in the evil days to come so bravely upheld their persecuted faith against the overwhelming forces arrayed against it, and inspired their disheartened co-religionists with fresh energy and enthusiasm to maintain the unequal struggle, there is no nobler figure than that of Éléonore de Roye. Less capable, less ambitious, than Jeanne d’Albret, she is infinitely more attractive, for she possessed a boundless fund of sympathy, an exquisite tact, and a charity which was but too seldom found among the leaders of “the Religion.”

Catholic as well as Protestant writers bear homage to the charms and virtues of this admirable woman. “She was a lady of much intelligence, of heroic courage, and of an admirable chastity,” says De Thou; Le Laboureur, while describing her as “a very obstinate Huguenot,” admits that she was “beautiful and very virtuous”;[12] while Désormeaux declares that she yielded to none of her sex in beauty, in grace, in intelligence and in chastity, and that she “surpassed every one in knowledge, in courage, and in magnanimity.”[13]

Condé could not be indifferent to the devotion of such a woman, and there can be no doubt that, for a long time, he reciprocated her affection and that he always entertained for her a sincere regard. Nevertheless, his marriage did little to subdue his taste for gallantry, and his attentions to the light beauties of the Court must often have caused her the keenest pain. “The good prince,” observes Brantôme, “was as worldly as his neighbour and loved other people’s wives as much as his own, partaking largely of the nature of the Bourbons, who have always been of a very amorous complexion.”

If, however, Condé shared his family’s weakness for the fair sex, he shared also its taste for a military career, and, for some years after his marriage, it was the camp rather than the Court which claimed the greater part of his time. The long and bitter struggle between the Houses of France and Austria, closed for a time by the Peace of Crépy, broke out afresh in the early summer of 1551, in Italy, where Henry II. and Charles V., though still nominally at peace, intervened in the dispute between Pope Julius III. and his vassal Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma. Condé, though only a few days married, at once demanded and obtained permission to serve as a volunteer in the Army of Italy, commanded by the Maréchal de Brissac, and set out for Piedmont.

When Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, went to the wars, two centuries later, he took with him an immense retinue of servants, and a long procession of carts and carriages, to transport which over two hundred horses were required;[14] while a whole regiment had to be detached for the protection of his precious person. His ancestor must have started on his first campaign in very different fashion; indeed, there was probably little to distinguish him from the crowd of gentlemen volunteers whom the prospect of some hard fighting had drawn across the Alps; and he evidently did not disdain to perform the work of the humblest soldier, since we hear of him toiling for two whole nights at the task of dragging the guns up the steep heights which commanded the Castle of Lantz. At the conclusion of the campaign, in which he had given abundant proof that he possessed all the courage of his race, although his general had found him “a little difficult to manage,” he reappeared for a brief interval at Court, and then, in the spring of 1552, took part in the “Austrasian expedition,” that military promenade through the Rhine country which gave to France, almost without striking a blow, Metz, Toul, and Verdun.

In the autumn of the same year, when Charles V., freed from his Germanic embarrassments by the agreement of Passau, laid siege to Metz, Condé and his brother, the second Comte d’Enghien, were among the young nobles who received permission “to take their pleasure at the siege.” The two Bourbon princes were entrusted with the defence of a part of the ramparts, and acquitted themselves with courage and capacity.

The summer of 1553 found Condé in Picardy, sharing with the Duc de Nemours the command of the light cavalry. In an engagement with the Imperialist cavalry at Doullens, he brought up four squadrons at a critical moment, and, by a brilliant charge on the enemy’s flank, decided the day. In the following year, he commanded the light cavalry on the Meuse and distinguished himself at the combat at Renty, and in 1555 he returned to the Army of Italy, in which he rendered excellent service on several occasions, notably at the siege of Vulpiano.

But the enmity of the Guises barred the way to the royal favour, and when, in 1556, the Truce of Vaucelles put an end to the war, the only recompense he had been able to obtain was the captaincy of a compagnie d’ordonnance, the nearest equivalent to a modern regiment.[15]

The truce, which had been concluded for five years, was soon broken, and at the beginning of 1557 the dogs of war were again slipped. In the summer, the Spaniards invaded Picardy and laid siege to Saint-Quentin, on the Somme, one of the bulwarks of Paris. Realizing the importance of saving a town the fall of which would open the road to the capital, the Constable hurried northwards with all the troops he could muster, and Condé accompanied him. The overwhelming superiority of the enemy in numbers, however, decided Montmorency not to risk an engagement, but merely to make a feint against the besiegers’ lines, and, under cover of this movement, to throw reinforcements and provisions into the town, after which he intended to retire. But the non-arrival of the boats required to transport the reliefs across the Somme caused a delay of more than two hours; and, when Montmorency began to retire, he found that the enemy had crossed the river by a ford of which he appears to have been in ignorance, seized the only road by which he could retreat, and cut his army right in two.

Surprised and hopelessly outnumbered, the French were routed with terrible loss. Condé’s brother, the gallant Comte d’Enghien, was among the slain, while the Constable and the Maréchal de Saint-André were taken prisoners. Condé himself, who was stationed with part of the light cavalry on the extreme right wing of the army, displayed the most admirable courage and presence of mind amid the general panic, and, keeping his men together, succeeded in cutting his way through the victorious Spaniards and reaching La Fère. He lost no time in taking the field again and kept it throughout the autumn, continually harassing the enemy and attacking their foraging-parties and convoys. So much activity and vigour on the morrow of a great defeat undoubtedly merited some substantial recognition; but when, at the beginning of the following year, he solicited the post of colonel-general of the light cavalry which he had so gallantly led, he was, to his intense mortification, passed over in favour of the Duc de Nemours, the candidate of the Guises. It is true that, by way of compensation, he was nominated colonel-general of the Cisalpine infantry, that is to say, of the infantry stationed in Piedmont; but, since France had lately withdrawn all her troops from Piedmont with the exception of a few garrisons, the appointment was regarded as an affront rather than an honour.

The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, which was concluded in the following spring, prevented Condé from acquiring any further military distinction in the service of his country, and henceforth whatever laurels fell to his share were gained on fields where Frenchmen were opposed to Frenchmen. If, however, the life of Henri II. had been prolonged only a little while, it is almost certain that the prince’s faithful services would not have remained unrewarded; for both the King and Diane de Poitiers were becoming seriously alarmed at the growing power and arrogance of the Guises, and the latter had broken with them and formed an alliance with Montmorency. But before the summer was over, Henri II. slept with his fathers at Saint-Denis; Diane and the Constable had been disgraced, and the Guises, thanks to the marriage of their niece, Mary Stuart, to the new King, had become the masters of France.

Condé’s patience had been severely tried during the reign which had just terminated; and it was scarcely to be expected that a young prince of his ambitious and energetic character would resign himself to the sight of the royal authority concentrated in the hands of those whose aim it had always been to exclude his family from their rightful share in the direction of affairs. Nor were the means for giving very effective expression to his dissatisfaction wanting.

The Reformation in France, which had made immense strides during the last years of Henri II., notwithstanding the fierce, if intermittent, persecution to which it had been subjected, had ceased to be a purely religious movement and was developing into a formidable political combination with which it was the interest of discontented and ambitious nobles to make common cause, without in any way partaking of its spiritual aspirations. Condé, with his gay and pleasure-loving nature, could have had but little sympathy with the austere tenets of Calvinism, and it is probable that the mortifications he had experienced, the hope of uniting his fortunes with the chances of success which the Reformers were able to offer, and, above all, his hatred of the Guises, contributed far more than religious convictions to decide him to embrace their faith and their cause. His elder brother, Antoine, who, on the death of his father-in-law Henri d’Albret, in 1555, had succeeded to the throne of Navarre, had already done so, but, though brave enough in war, he was irresolute and shifty to the last degree, and now, when faced with the necessity for vigorous action, he declined to compromise himself; and it was therefore to the second Prince of the Blood that the Huguenots and the swarm of disbanded soldiers and disappointed office-seekers whom the Guises had driven into the ranks of the opposition looked for leadership. How far Condé was implicated in the Conspiracy of Amboise, whether or no he was the chef muet who, in the event of a first success, was to place himself at the head of the movement, is a question which is never likely to be satisfactorily answered. It is sufficient that he was almost universally identified with that mysterious personage at the time, and that this belief came near to costing him his life.

Although permitted, after his indignant denial of the charge, to withdraw from Court, he and the King of Navarre, notwithstanding the entreaties of the Princesse de Condé, most imprudently resolved to obey the summons of François II. to the States-General at Orléans. It was to place his head in the lion’s mouth, for in the interval fresh evidence, or what might pass for evidence, against him had been obtained, and the Guises were resolved on his destruction. On 30 October, 1560, the two princes arrived at Orléans. The King received them with ominous coldness, and, as Condé was leaving the apartments of the Queen-Mother, where the audience had taken place, he was arrested, and conducted to a house near the convent of the Jacobins, which was immediately barred up, surrounded by soldiers, and transformed into a veritable Bastille. His wife, who, on learning of his arrest, had hastened to Orléans, was refused permission to see him; his attendants were withdrawn, and he was kept in the most absolute solitude.

Catherine de’ Medici, who at this time possessed little or no power, and had been compelled, from the instinct of self-preservation, to cling to the Guises, pretended to approve of what had been done, and replied to all who besought her not to allow the prince to be brought to trial. “It is my son’s will.” She confined her efforts to saving the King of Navarre, who was merely kept under surveillance in his apartments.

Although, as a Prince of the Blood, it was Condé’s undoubted privilege to be tried by the Grande Chambre of the Parlement in Paris, in which the princes and peers sat, the King entrusted his examination to a commission of judges presided over by Christophe de Thou, First President of the Parlement. Condé denied the competency of this tribunal, and “appealed from the King ill-advised to the King better-advised.” But his imprudence in accepting the services of two advocates gave a semblance of legality to the proceedings, and his appeals and protests having been overruled by the Privy Council, in which such was the fear inspired by the Guises that no one dared to utter a word in his defence, on 26 November, he was sentenced “to lose his head on the scaffold.”

It was at first considered probable that the King’s clemency would be extended to his condemned kinsman, “in consideration of his youth,” and every effort was made by the Princesse de Condé, the Châtillons, and other persons of high rank to secure a remission of the sentence. But nothing less than the death of their rival would satisfy the Guises, and, though the Chancellor de l’Hôpital, under the pretext of some legal flaw in the decree, succeeded in delaying the execution, it was finally fixed for 10 December, and the scaffold on which it was to take place was erected before the royal lodging.

Condé, whose courage had never once failed him, was calmly awaiting his fate, and actually playing cards with some of the officers who guarded him, when one of his servants, who had been permitted to attend him, approached as though to pick up a fallen card, and whispered: “Notre homme est croqué!” Mastering his emotion, the prince finished his game, and then, taking the man aside, learned from him that François II. was dead. The sickly young King had been taken ill on 16 November, and, though he so far recovered as to preside over the Council which passed judgment against Condé, on the following day his malady assumed a grave form, and on 5 December an abscess which had formed in the ear suddenly broke, and he died in a few minutes.

Foreseeing her eldest son’s approaching end, Catherine de’ Medici, on the advice of l’Hôpital, had determined to save the Bourbons, in order to use them to counterbalance the Guises and assure the independence of the royal power of which she was about to hold the reins. Scarcely had François II. drawn his last breath, when the old Connétable de Montmorency, hastily summoned by her, arrived at Orléans, at the head of eight hundred gentlemen; and the despotism of the Lorraine princes was at an end.

The death of François II. opened the doors of Condé’s prison, but the prince, who attached more importance to his honour than his liberty, refused to accept the latter until the former had been publicly vindicated, and, in the meanwhile, announced his intention of remaining where he was. In this decision he was supported by his wife, but, as his health had suffered during his imprisonment, she persuaded him, towards the end of December, to exchange the severe régime of his detention at Orléans for a mitigated captivity, more apparent than real, in the form of residence on an estate belonging to the King of Navarre, near la Fère, in Picardy. Here he remained for some weeks, when he returned to Court, where his innocence was acknowledged by a declaration of the new King, Charles IX., which was subsequently confirmed by the Parlement, and he was restored to his former position.

CHAPTER II

Critical condition of France at the accession of Charles IX.—Character and policy of Catherine de’ Medici—The Triumvirate—Catherine leans to the side of the Reformers—The “Edict of January”—Massacre of Vassy—Condé remains faithful to the Protestant cause—Beginning of the civil war—The Protestants, at first successful, soon in a desperate position—Condé turns to England for aid: Treaty of Hampton Court—Fall of Rouen—Condé marches on Paris—Battle of Dreux: the prince taken prisoner—Second captivity of Condé—Assassination of Guise—Conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs—The maids-of-honour—Peace of Amboise—Condé follows the Court.

Never had the internal condition of France been more critical, never had she stood more in need of a strong and wise government, than at the moment when the imaginary majority of François II. was succeeded by the real minority of Charles IX. The danger which threatened her was no longer, as in the time of the last Sovereign of that name, a struggle between individual ambitions; private ambitions had now identified themselves with the living forces of the nation; the whole of the nobility and gentry were already engaged in the quarrel of the great factions which divided France, and the mass of the people only awaited the signal to follow their example.

And the person who was called upon to deal with this critical situation was Catherine de’ Medici, a woman, a foreigner. During the reign of her husband, Catherine had perforce remained in the background, Henri II. being completely under the influence of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers; under François II., the government, as we have seen, had fallen into the hands of the Guises, and she had been, politically speaking, a mere cipher. But the early death of her eldest son had given her the opportunity which she so ardently desired—for all her life she had hungered for power and influence as a starving man hungers for bread—and having persuaded the King of Navarre to resign his claims to the Regency, in consideration of receiving the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, she at once assumed a quasi-absolute authority. She brought to the task a remarkable knowledge of men and affairs—the fruit of long years of quiet study and observation—a boundless activity, an untiring vigilance, a charm of manner which few who came into contact with her could resist, and a soul depraved by a life of subjection and dissimulation. Her master-passion was to govern through her sons, and she dreaded every influence which might weaken by one iota her personal authority.

To a certain extent, she succeeded in preserving this, but, though sincerely anxious to maintain peace, she was powerless to save France from the anarchy which menaced her. For she was timid, shifty, and irresolute, and incapable of any noble aim; while it is also probable that she failed to recognize, at any rate until matters had gone too far to be remedied, the gravity of the situation. “To divide in order to reign” was the principle upon which she acted; to give a little encouragement to the Huguenots, to instil a little apprehension into the Catholics, and to accustom both parties to regard her as the dominating factor in the situation. The result was that she was distrusted by both alike, and hastened the very calamity she desired to avert.

And this calamity was rapidly approaching. Calvinism was not, as certain Protestant historians would have us believe, a sect which demanded nothing but the liberty to worship God in its own way; it was violent, intolerant, propagandist, and, under the influence of the exiles who had tasted democracy in Switzerland, and of the discontented nobles who exploited it for their own ends, was becoming as much a political as a religious organisation. Thus, it deliberately provoked persecution and played into the hands of its most implacable enemies. The coalition which had been formed to check the ambition of the Guises was dissolved; while Condé and Coligny turned openly to Protestantism, the Constable, a rigid Catholic and a fervent absolutist, joined hands with those who had formerly plotted his ruin, and formed with the Duc de Guise and the Maréchal de Saint-André a new Catholic league, the ill-omened Triumvirate. Shortly afterwards, the vain and fickle Antoine de Bourbon, allured by what de Thou calls “the entertainment of hopes” dangled before his eyes by Philip II. of Spain, renounced both his family ties and his Protestant convictions and joined the Triumvirs.

Nevertheless, during the latter part of the year 1561 the Court was certainly rallying to the side of the Reformers, for the King of Navarre’s accession to the Triumvirate had given the latter such a predominance that Catherine was obliged to seek a counterpoise. It was with her warm approval that the Colloquy of Poissy took place, in the hope of arriving at some settlement of the chief differences between the two religions. The latitudinarian Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon was appointed the young King’s gouverneur; Coligny’s brother Andelot, most stalwart of Huguenots, was admitted to the Council. The celebrated Théodore de Bèze was invited to Paris; the King and Queen-Mother went to hear him preach, and he and other eminent divines expounded Calvinistic doctrines daily in the lodgings of Condé and Coligny to the ladies and gentlemen of the Court. The Huguenots in the provinces as well as in the capital were accorded a covert toleration, and the authorities recommended “to close their eyes to what only concerned the practice of their religion.”

But a much stronger hand than Catherine’s was required to persuade the two religions to dwell together in even a pretence of harmony. The Huguenots were determined to be treated no longer as legal outcasts; the High Catholic party, represented by the Triumvirate, was equally resolute to allow of no equality. After three months of argument and recrimination, and, at the last, of mere invective and abuse, the Colloquy of Poissy was dissolved; daily disturbances broke out; partisan feeling became more and more embittered; the Regent was powerless to stem the fast rising tide of hatred.

One last despairing effort for peace Catherine made. In the middle of January 1562, on the urgent advice of Condé, Coligny, and l’Hôpital, she promulgated the celebrated edict, known as the “Edict of January,” which recognized the legality of Protestant worship outside the walls of towns. The Huguenots were exultant; the Catholics correspondingly exasperated; disturbances, attended in several instances with bloodshed, occurred in the capital and in other towns; and on March 1, the Massacre of Vassy by Guise’s followers kindled the long-expected conflagration.

No effort had been spared by the Triumvirate to detach Condé from the Reformers; and the means which had proved so efficacious in the case of the King of Navarre had not been omitted. But the prince was made of sterner stuff than his brother; beneath a somewhat frivolous exterior he concealed a haughty and resolute spirit, and this, joined to the influence of his noble wife, kept him true to the cause which he had espoused. When the news of the massacre reached him, he was in Paris, where every Sunday he might have been seen, pistol in hand and accompanied by several hundred gentlemen on horseback, escorting Huguenot pastors through the howling mob to their meeting-place at Charenton. Furious with indignation, he lost not a moment in sending Bèze to the Court, which was then at Fontainebleau, to demand that the massacreur of Vassy should not be permitted to enter Paris. “I speak,” cried the divine, when the King of Navarre endeavoured to defend Guise, “for a Faith which is better in suffering than in avenging wrong; but remember, Sire, that it is an anvil which has worn out many a hammer.”

Catherine, without declaring her intentions, wrote to the duke ordering him to join her “peu accompagné” at Monceaux, in Brie, whither she proceeded with the young King, and, at the same time, sent orders to the Maréchal de Saint-André, who was in Paris, to repair to his government. Both declined to obey, and on March 16 Guise entered the capital at the head of 2000 horse, and was hailed by the populace “comme envoyé de Dieu.”

There were now in Paris two hostile camps, as in the time of the Bourguignons and Armagnacs; and Catherine, fearing a collision, sent orders to Condé to leave Paris. Recognizing the impossibility of disputing the capital with the Catholics, he obeyed, and proceeded to Meaux, where, after some hesitation, Coligny joined him. Catherine and the young King had returned to Fontainebleau, and the former wrote to Condé entreating him “to save the children, the mother and the kingdom.” If he and Coligny had acted with energy and decision, they might have secured the person of the young Sovereign; but they waited for reinforcements, and when at length they advanced towards Paris, they found that the Triumvirs had forestalled them, and that the King was in the hands of the enemy.

Foiled in this attempt, Condé turned southwards, with the intention of occupying Orléans, a place which, on account of its central position, would serve as an admirable base for his operations, and, to some extent, counterbalance the advantage which the Triumvirs derived from the possession of the capital.

On reaching Artenay, six leagues from Orléans, on the morning of April 2, he learned that Andelot, with a handful of men, had seized one of the gates of that town, and was holding it against the garrison and a part of the citizens. “He had with him about two thousand gentlemen and their valets, and, putting himself at their head, he set off at full gallop for the gate, and the whole pack after him.” Baggage, horses, and men fell and rolled over in the dust, without any one attempting to draw rein, amid shouts of laughter from the reckless cavalcade, and to the great astonishment of peaceable travellers, who, ignorant that hostilities had broken out, asked one another if it were “an assembly of all the madmen in France.” But the “madmen” swept along on their headlong course, and before noon had sounded from the clocks of Orléans, they were masters of the town and “of the taps of the most delicious wines of France.”[16]

“Under these joyous auspices,” observed Henri Martin, “began the most horrible civil war of modern times;” and unhappy France became the scene of a frightful orgy of massacre, rape, and pillage. At first Fortune smiled upon the Reformers, who, thanks to the organization of their churches, were better prepared for hostilities than their adversaries. The principal towns of Central France, Tours, Blois, and Bourges, declared against the Triumvirate, and admitted Huguenot garrisons; Rouen and Le Havre, in Normandy, Lyons and many cities in the South, fell into their hands. For a few weeks the movement seemed irresistible. But the Catholic party was by far the stronger. It had secured the person of the young King and forced Catherine to side with it, and thus had at its disposal the Treasury and most of the permanent forces of the realm. It appealed, also, to the Catholic States for assistance, and obtained from Phillip II. an auxiliary corps of 4000 Spaniards, which operated in Guienne and Gascony; while the Duke of Savoy sent troops into the Rhône valley. By the middle of August, all the towns seized at the outset by the Huguenots had been recovered, and the Protestant cause seemed well-nigh hopeless.

Desperately pressed, Condé turned to England for aid. Emissaries were dispatched to London, and on September 20, 1562, the Vidame de Chartres, on behalf of the prince, signed the Treaty of Hampton Court, which stipulated that Le Havre and Dieppe were to be placed in Elizabeth’s hands, in return for a loan of 140,000 crowns and a contingent of 6000 men. The vidame, however, went beyond his instructions, and permitted Cecil to insert an article whereby it was agreed that the English were to remain at Le Havre, not until the termination of the war, but until Calais was restored to them.

The calling in of the hereditary enemy brought great odium upon the Huguenot leaders, nor did they derive from it the advantages upon which they had counted, since Elizabeth, desirous only of securing an equivalent for Calais, declined to allow her troops to pass beyond the lines of Le Havre and Dieppe. At the risk of incurring her anger, Sir Adrian Poynings, who commanded temporarily at Le Havre, pending the arrival of the Earl of Warwick, sent five hundred men to endeavour to make their way into Rouen, which was now closely invested by the royal troops. The majority succeeded in this desperate enterprise, but they were powerless to save the town, which was taken by assault, after a siege during which the King of Navarre received a wound from which he died a month later, “still flattering himself with the hopes raised by the King of Spain.” He left as his heir a boy nine years old, who was one day to succeed to the throne of France through the common ruin of the Valois and the Guises.

The intervention of the English, if it had served no other purpose, had drawn off the Catholic army from its projected siege of Orléans, and Condé, ever sanguine, did not allow himself to be cast down by the reverses his cause had sustained. “We have lost our two castles (Bourges and Rouen),” said he, employing a chess metaphor, “but we shall take their knights”; and he was eager to stake the last chances of his party in a great battle. At the beginning of November, the news that a considerable force of German mercenaries, which Andelot had raised in the Rhineland, was on the march to join him, determined the prince to quit Orléans and advance upon Paris. At Pithiviers, on November 11, he affected his junction with the foreign levies, and, at the head of an army of some 15,000 men, more than one-third of whom were cavalry, he moved slowly towards the capital, taking and pillaging the towns on his line of march.

Paris was very weakly defended, most of its regular garrison being in the field with the Triumvirs, and, had he acted with vigour, he might have made himself master of at least a part of the city. But he allowed himself to be drawn into negotiations by Catherine, and the delay which these entailed enabled Guise to arrive with the advance-guard of the army which had been besieging Rouen.

After a skirmish beneath the walls, and two unsuccessful attempts to take the city by camisado, Condé drew off his troops and marched into Normandy, with the intention of getting into touch with the English at Le Havre. But, owing principally to the immense number of carts for the conveyance of past and future plunder which the Germans insisted on taking with them, his army made such slow progress that the Triumvirs were able to outmarch it, and on December 19 the prince found them barring his road near the town of Dreux.

The royal forces were superior in infantry and artillery to the Huguenots, but the latter had a decided preponderance in cavalry, and the battle which followed was long and obstinately contested. Condé, who had distinguished himself more by his intrepidity than his generalship, was unhorsed and taken prisoner; the Constable, who commanded the royal army, experienced a like fate; while Saint-André was killed.[17] The carnage on both sides was very great, but the Catholics remained masters of the field, though Coligny was able to draw off the beaten Huguenots in excellent order.

The Constable was dispatched, in charge of Andelot, to Orléans, where he had the Princesse de Condé for hostess; Condé was conducted by Montmorency’s second son, the Baron de Damville, to whom he had surrendered, to the quarters of Guise. In these detestable wars, prisoners were often treated with great harshness and cruelty, and sometimes, as we have just seen, their lives were not even spared when they happened to fall into the hands of some personal enemy. But Guise received Condé with as much courtesy and deference as the Black Prince had shown his royal captive at Poitiers. He placed at his disposal the peasant’s cottage in which he was quartered, apologizing for being compelled to give so poor a reception to so illustrious a visitor, and it was only at the prince’s repeated request that he consented to share with him this humble lodging. They supped together off the same coarse fare, conversing amicably the while, and the same bundle of straw served them for a bed. The duke, however, could well afford to show magnanimity towards a fallen foe, for, now that the King of Navarre and Saint-André were dead, and Condé and the Constable prisoners, he had no rival but Coligny to fear, and the predominance of his ambitious House seemed assured.

The day after the battle, Condé was again entrusted to the care of Damville, who had only surrendered his prisoner to Guise as an act of deference, and who was subsequently constituted his legal custodian by a special authority from the King. Damville, who naturally regarded him as a hostage for the safety of his father, the Constable, guarded him very strictly, though his servants were allowed to remain with him, and a Huguenot pastor named Pérussel, who had also been taken prisoner, was authorized to minister to his spiritual needs and conducted a long “prêche” in his chamber every day. After being successively conducted to Chartres, Blois, and Amboise in the wake of the Court, he was incarcerated by the Regent’s orders, in the Château of Onzain, an old feudal fortress, about three leagues from the last-named town.[18] Here he succeeded in bribing two of his gaolers, and arranged with their assistance to escape in the disguise of a peasant. But one of the men betrayed the plot to Damville, and Condé learned that all had been discovered by seeing the other soldier dangling from a gibbet erected beneath his window. After this, the prince was deprived of his servants, placed in solitary confinement, and most rigorously guarded; and a rumour began to spread, though it was probably without foundation, that the Guises intended to compel Catherine to have him again brought to trial for high treason.

Meanwhile, the Duc de Guise had laid siege to Orléans, the last stronghold left to the Reformers. The town taken, it was his intention to call out the ban and arrière-ban, for which purpose a tax had been levied on the revenues of the Church, overwhelm Coligny, who with the Huguenot cavalry was overrunning Normandy, drive the English from Le Havre and Dieppe, and convert his office of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which the King had been obliged to confer upon him in recognition of his services at Dreux, into a dictatorship.

The defenders of Orléans, decimated by famine and the plague, were incapable of offering more than a feeble resistance; the outworks were quickly captured, and the final assault was daily expected, when, on the evening of February 15, 1563, while returning from a reconnaissance, the duke was mortally wounded by a Huguenot fanatic, Poltrot de Méré, who fired upon him from the shelter of a copse. He expired six days later, to the undisguised joy of the Reformers and to the secret relief of Catherine, who dreaded nothing so much as the prospect of a second period of Guise ascendancy.

The death of the Duc de Guise paved the way for peace; and, through the intervention of Catherine and the Princesse de Condé, it was arranged that the prince and the Constable should meet and discuss its conditions. On March 7, two barges, the first coming from Orléans, the second from the opposite bank of the Loire, arrived at the Île-aux-Bœufs, situated a little below the town. In one was the Constable, under the care of his nephew, Andelot; in the other, Condé, under that of Damville. “There was a handsome boat ready for them, laid over with planks to make it broad and chamberlike, and covered with tapestry from the sun, where they should have ‘parlemented’ together.” But the uncle and nephew, unwilling to risk their conversation being overheard, “liked better to walk, which they did for two hours, d’Anville (sic), l’Aubespine and d’Aussy standing by, but not within hearing.”[19]

Then they parted, without having arrived at any agreement, since Condé insisted that the “Edict of January” should be re-established in its entirety, to which Montmorency absolutely declined to consent, declaring that the Catholics would refuse to observe it. The Constable was escorted back to Orléans, and the prince to the Catholic camp at Saint-Mesmin.

On the morrow, they returned to the Île-aux-Bœufs. This time the prince’s barge was followed by another, in which sat Catherine de’ Medici, Condé’s only surviving brother, the Cardinal de Bourbon, and the Duc d’Aumale, and two of the Queen-Mother’s maids of honour. It was remarked that these two damsels were the most beautiful of the bevy of young beauties whom Catherine had collected round her, and there was a shrewd suspicion that it was for that very reason they had been chosen to attend her Majesty upon this occasion. History has not preserved the name of the elder, but that of the younger was Isabelle de Latour-Limeuil, a lady who was destined to play a very prominent part in Condé’s life.

Condé was a bad subject for prison life, and the rigorous detention to which he had been subjected at the Château of Onzain had not been without its effect upon him; he was anxious to safeguard the interests of his co-religionists, but he was still more anxious to recover his liberty. “The little man to whom I have spoken,” wrote the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon, who had had an interview with him some days before, to Catherine, “is very desirous to see the end of these troubles; he will accommodate himself to everything.” The writer had correctly judged the situation.

The conference was renewed, this time in the presence of the Queen-Mother. Catherine had always exercised a great influence over Condé, and, only a few months before, in an interview between them at Thoury, she had all but brought him to conclude peace on her own conditions, when Coligny had interfered and caused the negotiations to be broken off. Now, however, Coligny was far away, and Catherine did not fail to press her advantage home. She made an eloquent appeal to the prince’s patriotism; she flattered him; she “insinuated that, if he were to conclude peace without being too obstinate over the conditions, he should be elevated to the rank of the late King of Navarre, his brother,[20] and might do, from that time, all that he wished for those of the Religion.”

LOUIS I DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ

FROM AN ENGRAVING

Condé was ambitious; he was far from unsusceptible to flattery, and he ardently desired to recover his freedom. He looked at the subtle diplomatist who was speaking him so fair, and forced himself to believe that she was sincere in her protestations. He looked at Damville and his guards, and thought with a shudder of the gloomy fortress which he had lately left, and to which it would probably be his fate to return, if the negotiations were broken off. And then his glance wandered to the maids-of-honour, standing just out of earshot, and rested on Isabelle de Limeuil; and he felt his heart beat a trifle faster, as he noted her charming face and the graceful lines of her figure. Did she not represent all the pleasures of the Court from which he had been so long separated, but which it was now in his power to enjoy again?

The prince was already won over, already prepared to accept important modifications of the “Edict of January,” when, that same evening, with the consent of the Queen, he entered Orléans to confer with the council of the Protestant Association. He found the council divided into two sharply defined parties; on the one side were all the ministers, to the number of seventy-two, with Théodore de Bèze at their head; on the other, the great majority of the Huguenot gentlemen.

“The men of war demanded only peace; the ministers of the Holy Gospel called for the continuance of the war, at least until the “Edict of January” was re-established in its entirety, and invited the prince to require the King to mete out rigorous punishment to all ‘atheists, freethinkers, Anabaptists, Servetists, and other heretics and schismatics.’ Barely escaped from the stake themselves, they demanded the right to drag other victims to it.”[21]

With ill-concealed impatience, Condé listened to the demands of these intractable theologians; then, turning from them, he invited his old companions-in-arms to express their opinion. With one voice these gentlemen, who were heartily weary of the war and asked only to be allowed to return to their homes, declared themselves willing to accept peace on the conditions which the Court was prepared to offer. Strong in their support, the prince felt that he could afford to defy the ministers and the democratic section of the party; and when, on March 23, Coligny, fresh from his victorious campaign in Normandy, arrived at Orléans to take part in the negotiations, he found that he was too late. The Edict, or Peace, of Amboise had been promulgated in that town on the 19th, and published in the royal camp on the 22nd.

The Admiral was deeply mortified at Condé’s surrender, in which he suspected that personal considerations had counted for not a little, and declared, with pardonable exaggeration, that “by a stroke of the pen more churches had been ruined than the enemy could have razed in ten years.” As for the Huguenot ministers, they were exasperated to the last degree against the prince, stigmatized the treaty as “that of a man who had left half his manhood in captivity,” and accused him of having yielded to the seductions of Catherine’s Court, and of having halené her maids-of-honour.[22]

Somewhat conscience-stricken, Condé joined the Admiral in a belated attempt to get the articles modified in a Protestant sense, but, though Catherine agreed to some concessions, she firmly refused to allow them to be inserted in the edict. On April 1 she made her entry into Orléans, having the Cardinal de Bourbon on her right hand, and Condé on her left. A few days later, Coligny set out for Châtillon, to seek in the bosom of his family the repose which he had so well earned. Condé would have done well to follow his example. Unfortunately, he preferred to follow the Court to Amboise.

CHAPTER III

Catherine de’ Medici and her “escadron volant”—Adroitness with which the Queen employs the charms of her maids-of-honour to seduce the Huguenot chiefs—The King of Navarre and la belle Rouet—Policy of Catherine after the Peace of Amboise—She determines to compromise Condé with his foreign allies and the French Protestants, by encouraging his taste for sensual pleasures—And selects for his subjugation her maid-of-honour and kinswoman Isabelle de Limeuil—Description of this siren—Her admirers—Her mercenary character—Beginning of her liaison with the prince—Condé and Elizabeth of England—Mlle. de Limeuil, inspired by Catherine, seeks to persuade Condé to break with Elizabeth—Mission of d’Alluye to England—Condé is induced to take up arms against his late allies—Siege and surrender of Le Havre.

The life of the Court, which naturally possessed a great attraction for a man of Condé’s temperament, was full of snares and pitfalls. It was not for the mere pleasure of beholding their pretty faces that Catherine recruited her entourage from the most beautiful young girls in France. During the lifetime of her husband, in the days before she had been called upon to play a political rôle, Catherine had been the most austere of queens, guarding the reputation of her ladies as jealously as she did her own, and visiting with her severe displeasure the slightest breach of decorum on their part. But when she found herself a widow, struggling in an endless web of plot and falsehood to protect her children’s heritage; beset on one side by the Catholics, on the other, by the Huguenots; often driven to her wits’ end to devise means to prevent the royal authority being submerged amid the strife of contending parties, her austerity gave way before political exigencies, and, recognizing how formidable a weapon she possessed in the charms of her “escadron volant,” she exploited them without scruple. “These maids-of-honour,” writes Brantôme, “were sufficient to set fire to the whole world; indeed, they burned up a good part of it, as many of us gentlemen of the Court as of others who approached their flames.”

Catherine received not a few remonstrances concerning the havoc wrought by the beaux yeux of these damsels. “You ought, Madame,” runs one of them, “to content yourself with a small train of maids-of-honour, and to look to it that they do not pass and repass through the hands of men, and that they are more modestly clothed.” But Catherine’s squadron had demonstrated its peculiar value on too many occasions for her to dream of disbanding it, or even of placing it on a peace-footing; and so its members continued to illuminate the Court ball-rooms, “like stars shining in a serene heaven.”[23] For the rest, her Majesty pretended to ignore the vices of her filles d’honneur, the better to make use of them when occasion for their services arose. No one could have shown more adroitness in throwing some isolated and often unconscious combatant in the path of the politicians and party-leaders whom she had reason to fear, to captivate their senses and surprise their secrets. It was against the Huguenot chiefs that this insidious mode of warfare was most frequently employed. “However austere they may wish to appear, these men are of their time, and share the weaknesses of their contemporaries. Women had, in many cases, launched them into adventures, women will check them in full career. Those who succeed without provoking scandal are highly praised and rewarded; the maladroit will be the less supported in their difficulties in that they are never able to invoke the excuse of a definite mission.”[24]

Knowing what we do of Catherine’s little ways, it is not difficult to imagine the tactics adopted. The destined victim, on some pretext or other, is lured to the Court. He comes, not ill-pleased to be afforded an opportunity of airing his grievances in the royal presence, but very resolved not to allow the Queen to penetrate the secrets of his party or to obtain from him the least concession. He is very coldly received, informed that his demands are unreasonable, and that the Queen fears that it will be impossible to accede to them. However, she has not the leisure to go further into the matter at that moment; let him return at the same hour on the following day, when she will hope to find him less exigent. And the audience is at end almost as soon as it has begun.

Somewhat piqued at the abruptness of his dismissal, he takes his departure, without the faintest suspicion that the most accomplished actress of the sixteenth century has been playing one of her many parts. Passing through the ante-chamber, he perceives, apparently awaiting her royal mistress’s summons, a demure damsel of disturbing beauty—it is always the freshest and most innocent-looking of the squadron who is detailed for this kind of service—who modestly lowers her eyes as they meet his, but not before he has had time to remark that they are in keeping with her other perfections. Our Huguenot, who, though he yawns through a long sermon each Sunday and conducts family worship every day of the week, that is to say, when he does not happen to be engaged in burning his Catholic neighbours’ chateaux over their heads, is none the less a courtier of beauty, finds himself wondering who the lady can be, and goes on his way not without a lingering hope that he may see her again.

On the morrow, he returns. This time, he is informed that the Queen is giving audience to one of the foreign ambassadors, and that he will have to wait for a few minutes. A quarter of an hour passes, and he is beginning to grow impatient, when the damsel whom he has seen on the previous day enters and advances to the door of the Queen’s cabinet, with something for her royal mistress in her hand. Here, however, she is stopped by the usher; Mademoiselle cannot be allowed to enter; her Majesty has given orders that she is on no account to be disturbed. And she, too, must wait. In the circumstances, Monsieur, who is, of course, a great noble, and may therefore be permitted what in others might be considered a liberty, ventures to address her. She answers with a modesty which charms him, and they converse very agreeably until presently he is summoned to the royal presence.

Here, some further pretext is invented for detaining him some days longer at the Court, but he resigns himself to the delay with a good grace, for those few minutes’ conversation in the ante-chamber have not been barren of result. A few hours later, he receives a courteous note from Catherine, greatly regretting the inconvenience to which he is being subjected and inviting him to a ball which she is giving the following evening. “The Religion” looks with scant favour on such worldly pleasures, but he tells himself that it would be churlish, perhaps impolitic, to refuse. Naturally, he meets Mademoiselle, arrayed in a ravishing toilette—very probably a present from the Queen—and looking more alluring than ever. He requests to be presented to her; they dance together, and he finds her as charming as she is beautiful. Opportunities for further meetings will not be wanting, for by this time the girl has received her instructions from headquarters; and soon there will be no further need for Catherine to devise pretexts for keeping the gentleman at Court.

When our Huguenot’s partisans learn what is going on, they will write letter upon letter, warning him that an ambush is being laid for him, and reproaching him with bringing discredit upon the Faith. But he is now fairly in the toils, and their warnings and reproaches will serve no purpose save to irritate him against them and loosen the ties which bind him to them. Perhaps, lured by the blandishments of his inamorata and incensed by the suspicions of his party, he will end by abandoning it altogether; at the least, a breach will be created between them which will not be easy to heal, and some very useful information, which has escaped his lips in unguarded moments, will find its way into Catherine’s cabinet.

It was thus that Condé’s elder brother, Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, had met Louise de la Beraudière,[25] Demoiselle de Rouet—la belle Rouet, as the Court called her—in whom he found so refreshing a contrast to his sharp-featured and austere consort that he permitted her to lead him whither she, or rather Catherine, willed.[26] She was the cause of his death. Wounded at the siege of Rouen and scarcely convalescent, he called her to him, and “behaved as though he considered that kings were immortal,” with the result that might be expected.

“Cy-gist le corps au vers en proye

Du roy qui mourut pour la Roye [Rouet].

Cy-gist qui quitta Jésus-Christ

Pour un royaume par escript,[27]

Et sa femme très vertueuse

Pour une puante morveuse.”

So ran a Huguenot epitaph on the ill-fated Antoine. But her connexion with the King of Navarre did not prevent la belle Rouet from making an advantageous marriage with Robert de Gombault, Sieur d’Arcis-sur-l’Aube, maître d’hôtel to Charles IX., whom she presented with two daughters.

The events of the civil war had profoundly altered Catherine’s views in regard to the two parties which divided the kingdom. At the opening of hostilities, she had believed that the Huguenots possessed the better chance of success, and, though constrained to lend her name to the Catholic leaders, she was careful not to allow herself to be identified too closely with their objects. But, as time went on, it became evident that, although the Huguenots were undoubtedly formidable, they were very inferior in numbers, and that the mass of the people were faithful to the Old Religion. She was compelled, therefore, to recognize that she had been mistaken, and that it would be very inadvisable for her to alienate the Catholic party. On the other hand, it would be easy to seize the direction of that party, for the King of Navarre and François de Guise were dead, the sons of Guise mere boys, the Cardinal de Bourbon absolutely incapable, the Montmorencies divided among themselves, and the Cardinal de Lorraine, deprived of the support of his brother, as humble as he had once been arrogant. She, therefore, decided to place herself and her son at the head of the Catholics and to re-establish unity in the kingdom by the ruin of Protestantism. But she had no intention of resorting to force; “she wished to undermine the ramparts of Calvinism, not to carry them by assault;”[28] to take back little by little, by restrictive interpretations of the Edict of Amboise, the concessions granted the Reformers; to disarm and dissolve their religious and military associations; and to dishearten them by withholding the protection of the Law and assuring impunity to the violence of the Catholics. But, aware that her task would be immensely facilitated if she could begin by depriving them of their protectors in high places, she was determined to leave no means untried to seduce or discredit the Huguenot chiefs, and particularly Condé—the first Prince of the Blood, the link between the noble and democratic sections of the party, the man whom she half-suspected of aspiring to the throne.

From the time of the Peace of Amboise, it was easy for Catherine to perceive that Condé, who had just consented to such important modifications of the “Edict of January,” was unlikely henceforth to show himself a very zealous champion of Protestantism, and that a considerable section of the Huguenots was disposed to question the seriousness of his conversion and the sincerity of his devotion to their cause. She knew, too, that if, on the one hand, Condé aspired, as a Prince of the Blood, to play a prominent part in affairs of State, and was ambitious to secure the title of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, he would be, as a man, eager to compensate himself for the ennui of his recent captivity by a round of pleasure and dissipation.

At first, Catherine’s attitude towards Condé was everything that he could possibly desire; she overwhelmed him with attentions; consulted him constantly on public affairs, and showed for his opinion a deference which delighted him. But all this was merely intended to put him off his guard and foster the pleasing illusions which he had entertained since the conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs. For, so far from having any intention of sharing the direction of affairs with the prince, she had determined to detach him from his alliances with the foreign Protestants, compromise him with his own party, and reduce him to political impotence. And, to accomplish this she proposed to deal with him as she had dealt with his unfortunate brother, the King of Navarre, by encouraging his taste for those sensual pleasures which the most dissolute Court in Europe offered so many opportunities of gratifying.

To dominate Condé, Catherine had in reserve an auxiliary not less redoubtable than la belle Rouet. It was Isabelle de Limeuil, one of the two maids-of-honour whom she had brought to the Île-aux-Bœufs, and who had already made a very favourable impression upon the inflammable prince.

Isabelle was a member of a branch of the House of La Tour d’Auvergne, to which Madeleine de la Tour, the mother of Catherine de’ Medici, had belonged, and was therefore a kinswoman of the Queen-Mother.[29] She was a blond, with beautiful blue eyes and a dazzling complexion, in figure somewhat thin, but exquisitely formed. She had been well-educated, was extremely intelligent and possessed of a mordant wit, which she used freely at the expense of those admirers who did not suit her fancy, not sparing even the most exalted personages. Brantôme relates how, one day during the siege of Rouen, she rebuffed the old Connétable de Montmorency, whose bitter tongue was dreaded by all the Court. The Constable, who, in spite of his age and gravity, did not disdain an occasional amourette attempted to make love to her and addressed her, in anticipation, as “his mistress.” She replied tartly that, if he supposed he would ever have the right to address her thus, he was greatly mistaken, and promptly turned her back on him. Little accustomed to such a rebuff, the old gentleman took his departure, decidedly crestfallen. “My mistress,” said he, “I leave you; you snub me cruelly.” “Which is quite fitting,” she retorted, “since you are accustomed to snub everybody else.”

Her soupirants were legion, and included the Duc d’Aumale; Florimond Robertet, Sieur du Fresne, one of his Majesty’s Secretaries of State;[30] Charles de la Marck, Comte de Maulevrier; Claude de la Châtre, afterwards maréchal de France; Brantôme and Ronsard, one of whose most charming chansons she inspired:

“Quand ce beau printemps je voy,

J’apercoy

Rajeunir la terre et l’onde,

Et me semble que le jour

Et l’amour

Comme enfans naissent au monde.

Quand le soleil tout riant

D’Orient

Nous monstre sa blonde tresse,

Il me semble que je voy

Devant moy

Lever ma belle maistresse.

Quand je sens, parmi les prez

Diaprez,

Les fleurs dont la terre est pleine,

Lors je fais croire à mes sens

Que je sens

La douceur de son haleine.

Je voudrois, au bruit de l’eau

D’un ruisseau,

Desplier ses tresses blondes,

Frizant en autant de nœus

Ses cheveux

Que je verrois frizer d’ondes.

Je voudrois, pour la tenir,

Devenir

Dieu des ces forests désertes

La baisant autant de fois

Qu’en un bois

Il y a de feuilles vertes.”

With the exception of Du Fresne, who passed for her amant de cœur, it is doubtful if any of the gentlemen we have named ever saw his hopes materialize, for the fair Isabelle was exceedingly fastidious. Moreover, she appears to have been one of those sirens who have a nice appreciation of the commercial value of their charms, and who not only set an exalted price upon their favours, but do not scruple to discount it in advance and subsequently decline to meet their obligations. “Monseigneur,” writes she to the Duc d’Aumale, in a letter appealing to his benevolence, “if you have not discovered how much I desired to do the thing which was agreeable to you, it was not because you had not the means, but the will.”[31]

Isabelle lent herself the more readily to Catherine’s plans, since the mission confided to her was one in which her inclination happened to harmonize with her interests. For she seems to have been attracted from the first by this good-humoured little man, with his pleasant face and his laughing eyes, who danced so gracefully, paid such pretty compliments to the ladies, and, notwithstanding his lack of inches, could hold his own in manly exercises with any gentleman at the Court. And, besides, he was a Prince of the Blood and one of the bravest captains in France; and his narrow escape from the scaffold three years before, his exploits in the field, and his recent captivity, all of which naturally made a powerful appeal to ladies of a romantic disposition, had greatly enhanced the favour with which he had always been regarded by the opposite sex, many of whom would have been only too willing to accept him as a “serviteur.”

As for Condé, flattered by the preference of a young beauty for whom some of the most fascinating gallants of the Court had sighed in vain, he never paused to consider how far this bonne fortune was due to his own attractions, but plunged into it with the same impetuosity with which on the battlefield he threw himself into the thick of the enemy’s squadrons. He promised himself merely an agreeable adventure; he found one of those entanglements from which it is a difficult matter to escape.

Isabelle de Limeuil was very soon afforded an opportunity of putting the devotion which her royal admirer professed for her to the test.

Coligny and the Huguenot stalwarts had not been the only allies whom Condé had offended in accepting the conditions imposed by the Court in the Peace of Amboise. It will be remembered that an article in the Treaty of Hampton Court had stipulated that the English were to retain possession of Le Havre and Dieppe until Calais had been restored to them. Now, Condé had never officially ratified the engagements that the Vidame de Chartres had undertaken in his name; indeed, he pretended to be unaware of their full import; and had he ever been so desirous of it, it would have been impossible for him to have made the immediate restoration of Calais, or the continued retention of Le Havre by the English as a lien upon that town, a condition of peace. As an English historian very justly remarks, such a proposal would have “enlisted the pride of France against himself and his cause and have identified religious freedom with national degradation.”[32] When, therefore, on his return to Orléans after the conference on the Île-aux-Bœufs, he wrote to inform Elizabeth of what was taking place, he said not a word about Calais, but boldly assumed that her Majesty’s motives in coming to the assistance of the Huguenots had been entirely disinterested, and that, since liberty of conscience was on the point of being secured, there was no longer any occasion for continuing the war. “Now, Madame,” he wrote, “you will let it be known that none other reason than simply your zeal for the protection of the faithful who desire the preaching of the pure Gospel induced you to favour our cause.”[33]

Elizabeth, however, cared very little for the protection of the faithful in comparison with Calais, and she wrote the prince a very angry letter, in which she called upon him to fulfil his promise and bade him beware “how he set an example of perfidy to the world.” Her remonstrances, however, produced no effect, and immediately after the signing of the Peace, in accordance with an article which stipulated that the foreign auxiliaries on both sides should be sent home, the Earl of Warwick received notice that he was expected to withdraw from Le Havre.

This, however, Elizabeth firmly declined to allow him to do. In vain, Condé wrote, offering her, in the name of himself, the Regent, and the entire nobility of France, to renew formally and solemnly the clause in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis for the restoration of Calais in 1567, to repay the money which she had advanced the Huguenots, and to remove all restrictions upon English trade with France. In vain, he despatched envoys to explain his position and to reason with her. In vain, the young King wrote himself, offering the ratification of the treaty, with “hostages at her choice” for its fulfilment from the noblest families in France. Bitterly mortified at having been outwitted in a transaction from which she had intended to reap all the advantage, she would listen to no terms. The Prince de Condé, she declared, was “a treacherous, inconstant, perjured villain,” with whom she desired to have no dealings; she required Calais delivered over to her and her money paid down, and until she had obtained both, Le Havre should remain in her hands.

Catherine de’ Medici had viewed with complacency the obstinacy of the English Queen. Although the reduction of Le Havre, a place which could easily be revictualled from the sea and which had been furnished during the English occupation with new defences, might prove a formidable undertaking, she had no doubt of success; and she preferred recovering it by conquest to seeing it amicably restored, since she would then be at liberty to retain Calais. Moreover, if Condé could be brought to turn against Elizabeth the army which her own money had assisted him to raise, and to take part in the war in person, an irremediable breach would be created between them, and she would have nothing more to fear from English intervention.

Inspired by Catherine, Isabelle de Limeuil employed all her persuasions to induce the prince to break with England; but, great as was the empire which she already exercised over Condé, and deeply incensed as the latter was by the tone of Elizabeth’s letters, and still more by the contemptuous manner in which she had spoken of him, he still remained undecided. There was no blinking the fact that, however great the difference between her promises and her performances, and however selfish her motives, the Queen had rendered the Huguenots material assistance in the late war; and Coligny and Andelot had so well recognized this that, while warmly approving of the refusal to surrender Calais, they had declined to bear arms against her. Condé was unwilling to show himself less scrupulous than they; and, besides, he had, while at Orléans, solemnly assured the English envoy that “his sword should never cut against the Queen’s Majesty.”[34]

He, therefore, urged Catherine to make a final endeavour to effect a peaceful settlement. Very reluctantly, she consented, and, towards the end of May, the Sieur d’Alluye was despatched to London with fresh propositions. D’Alluye was a young man of thirty, ignorant, conceited, and presumptuous; in fact, if it had been Catherine’s intention—which it probably was—to wound the pride of Elizabeth and provoke a new and humiliating refusal, she could not have made a better choice. Condé having requested that his confidant La Haye should be joined to d’Alluye, the Regent readily consented, well aware that a refusal transmitted through him would only have the more weight. Everything fell out precisely as might have been foreseen. After several acrimonious conferences with the English Ministers, in which d’Alluye “showed nothing but pride and ignorance,”[35] that gentleman haughtily informed the Queen, that “he had no commission to treat of Calais; his charge was only to demand Newhaven [Le Havre].”[36] Elizabeth lost her temper, and, red with anger, replied that, in occupying Le Havre, she had had no other purpose than to avenge the honour of England, which had been compromised by the loss of Calais.

This frank avowal stung the national pride of the French to the quick; from the Channel to the Pyrenees the universal cry was “Vive la France,” and Catholics and Huguenots, moved by a common impulse, pressed into the army which was being mobilized to wrest Le Havre from the grip of the English. Catherine adroitly seized the occasion to renew, through Isabelle de Limeuil, her importunities; the last scruples of Condé were overcome, and on 19 June the English envoy Middlemore, who, on the pretext of facilitating communications between Condé and Elizabeth, had been charged by the latter to attend the prince everywhere, writes to Cecil: “The inconstancy and miserableness of this Prince of Condé is so great, having both forgotten God and his own honour, as that he hath suffered himself to be won by the Q.[ueen] mother to go against her Majesty at Newhaven [Le Havre], and for the present is the person that, above all others, doth most solicit them of the Religion to serve in these wars against her Majesty.” And he adds that the prince, “specially desiring now to have every man to show himself as wicked as he, hath sent for the Admiral and M. Andelot, his brother, to come to the Court out of hand, where, being once arrived, they think to prevail with them as to win them to like and take in hand the said enterprise.”[37] Isabelle de Limeuil had served Catherine well.

A few days later, Condé having courteously desired Middlemore, who continued to stick to him like a burr, “to retire himself,” joined the army before Le Havre, where operations had already begun. The garrison had promised Elizabeth that “the Lord Warwick and all his people would spend the last drop of their blood before the French should fasten a foot in the town”; but, unhappily, they had an enemy to contend with within the walls infinitely more formidable than the one without—an enemy whom no skill could outwit and no courage repel. In the first days of June, the plague broke out among them, and, pent up in the narrow, fetid streets, the soldiers died like flies. By the end of the month, out of seven thousand men who had formed the original garrison, but three thousand were fit for duty; and by 11 July only fifteen hundred were left. Reinforcements were hurried across the Channel, only to sicken and die in their turn; a south-westerly gale drove the English ships from the coast, and the French succeeded in closing the harbour, so that soon famine was added to pestilence.

Elizabeth, alarmed by the disastrous news from Le Havre, began to repent of her obstinacy, and offered to accept the terms which she had so indignantly rejected. But it was now too late; the French, well aware of the condition of the garrison, refused to reopen the negotiations, and on 27 July, just as the besiegers, who had already made two breaches in the defences, were preparing for a general attack, Warwick, who, the previous evening, had received permission from the Queen to surrender at the last extremity, offered to capitulate. Terms were soon arranged, and on the 29th the town was restored to France, and the remnant of its brave defenders sailed for England, carrying with them the plague, which they spread far and wide through the land.

After long negotiations, peace was finally concluded at Troyes, in April 1564. Elizabeth lost all her rights over Calais, and had to content herself with a sum of 120,000 crowns, as the price of the freedom of the French hostages. Although she on more than one occasion pressed Condé and Coligny for the repayment of the money she had advanced the Huguenots, she does not appear to have succeeded in recovering any part of it.

CHAPTER IV

Condé is disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom—The prince incurs the hatred of the extreme Catholics—Plot to assassinate him on the Feast of Corpus Christi—Suspicion with which he is regarded by the zealots of his own party—Condé, deceived in his ambition and mortified by the hostility of the extremists on both sides, turns to pleasure for consolation—Violent passion of the Maréchale de Saint-André for him—Indignation and alarm aroused at Geneva by the rumours of Condé’s amorous adventures—Calvin and Bèze address a joint letter of remonstrance to the prince—Condé at Muret—Death of two of his children—Failing health of the Princesse de Condé—Her touching devotion to her husband—Her dignified attitude in regard to his infidelities—Return of Condé to the Court—Quarrel between him and Isabelle de Limeuil—Temporary triumph of the Maréchale de Saint-André—Refusal of the King to sanction the betrothal of the Marquis de Conti to Mlle. de Saint-André—Condé quits the Court in anger, but is reconciled to Isabelle and returns—A second honeymoon.

After having broken definitely with his former allies, and even borne arms against them in person, Condé looked to receive from the hands of the Queen-Mother the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which Catherine appears to have given him to understand would be the reward of his compliance with her wishes. But her Majesty, though she complimented him warmly on the courage he had displayed during the siege, had not the smallest intention of sharing with the prince the power of which she was so jealous; and, by causing the Parlement of Rouen to proclaim the majority of Charles IX., who had just entered his fourteenth year, she adroitly contrived to reduce to nothing all pretension on his part to the coveted title and to retain the sovereign authority in her own hands.

The discovery that he had been the dupe of his ambition was not the only mortification which Condé had to endure. If he were at bottom but a lukewarm adherent of the Reformed Faith, if in the negotiations which had preceded the Peace of Amboise he had been not unmindful of his own interests, he was none the less sincerely anxious that the rights guaranteed to the Protestants by that treaty should be observed; and his persistence in defending them drew upon him the hatred of the extreme Catholics. So exasperated, indeed, were the fanatical Parisians against him that for some months his friends considered it unsafe for him to appear in the capital, even in the suite of the King, and on one occasion when he did venture there, he narrowly escaped being assassinated.

In one of his despatches to Cecil, Middlemore gives the following account of the affair:—

“On the 9th inst., the King went from Bois de Vincennes to Paris, as well to keep the people from sedition as to assist at the Feast of Corpus Christi, which was the next day. Condé (who had refused to go thither) was won to accompany him, and on the morrow brought him to Our Lady Church,[38] where he left him at the door, without entering. These ceremonies passed, the King, about 7 p.m., came back to bed to Bois de Vincennes, accompanied by his mother and the Prince. As they passed the town-gates,[39] they found 600 horsemen, well-armed and mounted, who were assembled to slay the Prince and all his, if they could have taken him out of the presence of the King; but perceiving the King, they divided themselves on both sides of the way, and suffered him to pass quietly, on whose right hand at that time the Prince was, and the Queen-Mother on his left. The Princess, his wife, coming in her coach a little after, was assailed by them, and would have been murdered had not the cochier bestirred himself; and such gentlemen as were about her cried to them that it was not the Princess of Condé, but the Queen’s maids, which kept them from shooting their pistols at her, having them ready bent, until they overtook the King, in whose presence (when they saw that they had failed of the Prince and Princess) they killed a captain of the Prince[40] at the side of his wife’s coach, and took five or six of his gentlemen prisoners, and retired. This outrage is greatly stomached by the Prince, who has since been assured that some of the House of Guise did ‘dress’ him this party; and therefore he told the Queen, before the whole Council, that he will not tarry in the Court unless the whole House of Guise retire from thence; and so has desired her to consider which of them shall do the King better service, and that the others may be commanded forthwith to dislodge.”[41]

On the other hand, the zealots of Condé’s own party, who had so bitterly denounced the Peace, could not forgive his want of enthusiasm, nor the very plain language in which he rebuked their insulting behaviour towards the Catholics in those districts in which the latter happened to be in a minority. They accused him of “swimming betwixt two waters,” “of playing the Machiavelli,” and of seeking to use both parties for his own ends.[42] “In their eyes,” observes the Duc d’Aumale, “his desire for the maintenance of peace was nothing but the indifference of gratified ambition, or the forgetfulness of duty amidst the intoxication of pleasure.”[43]

If Condé’s efforts on behalf of his co-religionists should have sheltered him from such accusations, his private life, it must be admitted, was very far from being in accordance with the austere religion which he professed, and was calculated to arouse grave apprehensions among the Protestants. Deceived in his ambition, mortified by the hostility which his well-intentioned efforts had been received by the extremists of both parties, he had turned to pleasure for consolation and surrendered himself unreservedly to all the temptations of that gay and dissolute Court. His days were passed in the hunting-field, the tennis-court, and the tilt-yard; his nights at the ball, the play, or the card-table, and often in more questionable amusements. Grave Huguenots who came to lay their grievances before him were indignant to find the chief of their party, who should have been occupying himself with the interests of religion and setting an example of godly living to those about him, mingling in all the profane diversions of the Court, as though he had not a care in the world, and inexpressibly shocked to learn that he was forgetting his devoted wife in the embraces of “Midianitish women.”

For Isabelle de Limeuil, if she occupied the premier place in Condé’s affections, could not claim a monopoly of them. His Highness, in point of fact, disdained few bonnes fortunes, and the complaisant beauties of Catherine’s Court were generally ready to meet the advances of the first Prince of the Blood a good deal more than halfway.

Among those who entered the lists against Isabelle, the most redoubtable was Marguerite de Lustrac, the widow of the unfortunate Maréchal de Saint-André, so foully slain at Dreux. Although no longer in her first youth, Madame la Maréchale was still one of the most beautiful and fascinating women at the Court—“la Marguerite de douceur,”[44] a contemporary writer calls her. She was also extremely wealthy and gave herself the airs of a queen, being always attended by an immense retinue, which included cadets of the noblest families in France.

Feeling the need of consolation in her bereavement, the lady cast a favourable eye in the direction of Condé, and, piqued by his indifference—he was just then in the middle of his honeymoon with Isabelle—soon conceived for him the most violent passion. Since sighs and languishing glances did not suffice to bring him to her side, she resolved to have recourse to other means. By the Maréchal de Saint-André she had had a daughter, who was one of the greatest heiresses in France. This daughter had for some time past been destined for the young Henri de Lorraine, who, by the tragic death of his father, had now become Duc de Guise, and she had even been confided to the care of the widowed duchess. But the maréchale, having decided that the surest means of subjugating Condé was to appeal to his interests, suddenly demanded that her daughter should be sent back to her, repudiated her engagements with the Guises, and offered the girl to the prince, for his eldest son, Henri, Marquis de Conti, now twelve years old.

The prospect of an alliance which would not only bring great wealth into his family, but inflict a cruel humiliation on the hated Guises was naturally very favourably received by Condé, and the enamoured maréchale did not fail to take full advantage of the frequent interviews between her and the object of her passion which the affair, of course, necessitated. Nevertheless, she did not succeed in weaning the Prince from Isabelle, and had to rest content with the few crumbs of affection which he condescended to bestow upon her.

Rumours of his Highness’s amorous adventures were not long in reaching Geneva, where they aroused both indignation and alarm. Had the delinquent been a less exalted personage, he would probably have been straightway excommunicated; but Calvin and Bèze, though exasperated by the carelessness with which he was compromising their common cause, knew very well that the first Prince of the Blood was an asset with which the party could not possibly dispense. They knew, too, that his amour-propre had already been deeply wounded by the reproaches that had been addressed to him at the time of the Peace of Amboise, and that it was necessary to spare his feelings as much as possible; and, accordingly, contented themselves by addressing to him, in the name of their afflicted Church, a letter of remonstrance, couched in studiously moderate terms:

Monseigneur,

We cannot forbear to beseech you not only to use your endeavours in the cause of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the advancement of the Gospel and for the security and repose of the poor faithful, but also to show in your whole life that you have profited by the doctrines of salvation, and to let your example be such as to edify the good and to close the mouths of all slanderers. For in proportion as you are conspicuous from afar in so exalted a position, ought you to be on your guard lest they should find any fault in you. You cannot doubt, Monseigneur, that we love your honour as we desire your salvation; and we should be traitors were we to conceal from you the rumours that are in circulation concerning you. We do not suppose that there is any direct offence to God; but when it is reported to us that you make love to ladies, your authority and reputation are seriously prejudiced. Good people will be scandalized thereby; the evil-disposed will make it a subject of mockery. It involves a distraction which hinders and retards you from attending to your duty. There must even be some mundane vanity in it; and it becomes you, above all else, to take heed lest the light which God has placed in you be quenched or grow dim. We trust, Monseigneur, that this warning will be taken in good part, when you reflect how much it is for your service. From Geneva, this thirteenth day of September 1563.

Your very humble brethren,

Jean Calvin

Théodore de Besze

Condé received this letter at the Château of Muret, in Picardy, whither he had just arrived on a visit to his wife and family, accompanied by his brother-in-law, the Comte de la Rochefoucauld,[45] and his nephew, the Prince de Porcien. It would not appear to have been altogether without effect, for, on 2 October, Condé’s mother-in-law, the Comtesse de Roye, wrote to the Duke of Würtemberg: “The prince, my son-in-law, intends to devote himself more and more to everything which can further the reign of Jesus Christ.”[46]

In the course of that same month, a domestic calamity came to add weight to the counsels of Calvin and Bèze. Two of his younger children, Madeleine, aged three, and Louis, a child of eighteen months, fell ill and died within a few days of one another, to the inexpressible grief of the Princesse de Condé, who was one of the most devoted of mothers.

The princess’s relatives and friends, who probably regarded the death of the children as a direct judgment from Heaven upon the father’s sins, did not fail to improve the occasion, and represented to Condé that it was his duty to withdraw, for some time at least, from the Court and remain with his bereaved wife. The poor lady, indeed, needed all the care and attention which were in his power to bestow, since she was a prey to bodily suffering as well as to anguish of mind. Always a delicate woman, the dangers and agitations of the past two years had tried her cruelly. In the spring of 1562, when on her way from Meaux to Muret with her eldest boy and a small retinue, she had been attacked by a mob of fanatical peasants, who were marching in a Catholic procession, “without any cause, unless it were that they had been incited by a malignant priest, out of hatred for the Religion.”[47] The litter in which the princess was being carried was smashed to pieces by volleys of stones, and she herself narrowly escaped serious injury. She was then in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and had barely time to reach the nearest village when she gave birth to twin sons. Nevertheless, as soon as she was able to leave her bed, she insisted on setting out for Orléans to join her husband, and, during the siege of that town in the following winter, she remained there, amid all the horrors of war, pestilence, and famine, to encourage its defenders by her heroic example.

Although her health had been profoundly affected by all that she had gone through during the civil war, the princess considered it her duty, so long as any physical strength remained to her, to reside at the Court with her husband, and to follow him in his journeys. Thus, when, in the early summer of 1563, Condé decided to take part in the expedition against Le Havre, she set out for Normandy, accompanied by her mother, the Comtesse de Roye. But, on reaching Gaillon, she was attacked by small-pox of so severe a type that, for some time, she was in grave danger. Scarcely was she convalescent, than Madame de Roye fell ill, in her turn; and the princess, in attending to her mother, neglected her own health, which from that moment declined steadily.

Although the dissolute life which Condé was leading had caused her the greatest grief, she had refrained from reproaching him. “For her,” says her biographer, “the true remedy for the irregularities of the unfaithful husband and for the anguish of the outraged wife was to be found in earnest and continual prayer. She implored God to save the soul led astray, and strove, by patient efforts, discreetly directed, and loving instances, to bring back this soul into the path of duty, and to revive in it family affections.”[48] She now joined her entreaties to those of her friends and relatives to persuade her husband to remain with her. But Condé’s career of dissipation had stifled his better nature; the impressions produced on his mind by the death of his children were soon effaced, and, oblivious of the duty which he owed his ailing wife, and of the many obligations under which she had placed him, in the first days of November, he quitted her abruptly and returned to the Court, which was now in residence at Fontainebleau.

A most unwelcome piece of intelligence greeted him on his arrival. He was informed that, during his absence in Picardy, Mlle. de Limeuil had shown herself so unworthy of the signal honour he had done her as to find consolation in the homage of M. du Fresne, a gentleman for whom she had shown a decided preference in the days before Condé appeared upon the scene. The prince, who entertained a very high opinion both of the lady and of his own powers of fascination, was at first incredulous; but the evidence laid before him was sufficiently circumstantial to disturb his peace of mind very seriously. In consequence, the reunion to which he had looked forward with so much impatience was shorn of all its rapture, and, instead of smiles, endearing words, and embraces, there were reproaches, indignant denials, sarcastic rejoinders, tears, and sulks.

The Maréchale de Saint-André did not fail to profit by the indiscretions of her rival, and delivered so vigorous and well-timed an assault upon the prince’s heart that she succeeded in temporarily establishing herself there, and “audaciously flaunted her conquest before the eyes of the whole Court.” The maréchale had now recovered her daughter from the Duchesse de Guise, though not without an appeal to the law courts, and the little girl was on the point of being formally betrothed to the Marquis de Conti, when the Queen-Mother, who had got wind of the project, and had no mind to see the House of Condé thus aggrandized, suddenly intervened and persuaded the King to inform the parents that he should refuse his sanction to the match.

Condé could not contain his indignation. “The Prince de Condé has left the Court in anger,” runs a letter from Fontainebleau, “because they (Charles IX. and Catherine) would not give the daughter of the late Maréchal de Saint-André to his son. He believes that they intend to give her to Guise. The Constable has gone to fetch him back. Others have gone to fan the flame.”[49] But it appears to have been Mlle. de Limeuil, and not the Constable, who persuaded the prince to stomach the affront he had received and to return to the Court. Acting doubtless by Catherine’s orders, the damsel addressed to him eloquent and persuasive letters, assuring him that he alone possessed her heart, and that the affair with M. du Fresne had been no more than a harmless flirtation, which malicious persons of both sexes—woman who envied her her happiness, and gallants who could not forgive her for having preferred the prince to them—had magnified into an intrigue. As for the matter which had caused his departure from the Court, was it worth while to sacrifice his pleasures to his amour-propre? The little Mlle. de Saint-André was a sickly child, who would probably never live to a marriageable age. Let him return, and he would find his Isabelle impatiently awaiting him.

Condé did return, forgetting for the nonce his grievances against Catherine and anxious only for a reconciliation with his mistress. The Maréchale de Saint-André was compelled, to her intense mortification, to resign her conquest and retire temporarily from the field; and the prince and Isabelle embarked upon a second honeymoon, which was conducted with so little pretence at concealment that people were astonished that Catherine, who still insisted on the observance of some outward decorum at her Court, should permit such “goings on.” Her Majesty, however, who was fully alive to the political advantages of a passion which was, so to speak, binding her adversary hand and foot, found it convenient to be a little blind.

In the course of the month of November, Coligny and Andelot arrived at the Court, and, on learning of the manner in which Condé was parading his profligacy, expostulated with him in no measured terms. Their remonstrances, however, had very little effect, and it was not until the following February, when the Princesse de Condé paid a brief visit to Fontainebleau, that his Highness condescended to show some respect for les convenances.

CHAPTER V

The fêtes of Fontainebleau—Charles IX. and Catherine set out on a grand progress through the kingdom—Dangerous illness of the Princesse de Condé—Her husband obliged to remain with her—Scandalous dénoûment of the amours of Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil—Indignation of the Queen-Mother—Isabelle and the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon—The Comte de Maulevrier accuses Isabelle of having plotted to poison the prince—She is arrested and conducted to the Franciscan convent at Auxonne—Tender correspondence between her and Du Fresne—Passionate letters of Condé to his mistress—Isabelle denies the charges against her—Her letter to Catherine—She is removed to Vienne—Her despair—Her pathetic letters to Condé—She is examined by the Bishops of Orléans and Limoges, and confronted by Maulevrier.

The Court was very gay that winter. At the beginning of the spring, Charles IX. and Catherine were to set out on a grand progress through the kingdom, which was expected to occupy the better part of two years; and, before their departure, Catherine wished to revive the magnificent fêtes of which Fontainebleau had been the theatre in the days of “le Roi chevalier.” In the vast galleries where Primaticcio has immortalized the beauty of her rival Diane de Poitiers, she entertained the élite of the nobility of France, Catholics and Protestants being invited without distinction. Hunting-parties, tilting-matches, mimic combats on foot and on horseback, balls, banquets and theatrical representations filled the days and nights; the princes and great nobles vied with one another in the sumptuousness of the entertainments which they, in return, offered to their young Sovereign and his mother; and a stranger who had been suddenly transported into the midst of all this gaiety and extravagant splendour would have found it difficult to believe that he was in a country where the ashes of a desolating civil war had scarcely had time to grow cold.

One of the features of the fêtes was a grand banquet, followed by a “ballet-comédie,” which Catherine gave at the Vacherie. Isabelle de Limeuil figured in it, in the character of Hebe, and “attired in a tunic of transparent gauze, which permitted one to catch a glimpse of limbs which the goddess might have envied,” was the cynosure of all eyes. Condé was no doubt not a little flattered by the admiration which his lady-love was arousing, and it is to be hoped that the charms which she so freely displayed sufficed to preserve him from the manœuvres of her fair colleagues in the Queen’s service, who, we are told, were indefatigable in their efforts to detach him from her. At the Court of Charles IX., it was something even to be faithful in infidelity!

On 13 March, 1564, their Majesties quitted Fontainebleau, and set out on their progress through the realm. This journey had been long meditated by Catherine, who expected from it important results. In the first place, respect for the central authority had almost disappeared amid the anarchy of the civil war, and the Queen desired, by making the young King known to the nation, to re-establish the monarchical power in the interior. In the second, the crisis through which France had just passed had lowered the country immeasurably in the eyes of other States, and she flattered herself that, by means of interviews with foreign sovereigns on the frontiers, she might do much to restore the prestige of the French name. Moreover, by establishing a good understanding with them, and particularly with Philip II. of Spain, she hoped to free herself from the tutelage of the grandees of the kingdom.

The cortège was a most imposing one, for Catherine wished to impress the people and the sovereigns whom she was to meet by the magnificence of the royal retinue. The whole of the Court followed the King—princes, ministers, gentlemen, and ladies—and there was a veritable cohort of pages and lackeys, wearing his Majesty’s livery of blue, red, and white, all the pages being dressed in velvet. The military escort was a very large one, and comprised not only all the Household troops, but several companies of men-at-arms. The Constable marshalled the procession, and directed its movements as he would have done that of an army on the march.[50]

Champagne was first visited. The Court stopped for a few days at Sens, where the young King was given a magnificent reception, and then moved on to Troyes, which was reached on 27 March. In this town, where the negotiations for peace with England were finally concluded, Condé “fell sick of the palsy or apoplexy, which took him at tennis, and a fever upon it,”[51] and his condition appeared sufficiently grave for his wife, who was then at the Château of Condé-en-Brie, to be summoned to nurse him. The devoted woman, although suffering herself, lost not a moment in hastening to her faithless husband’s side, and in lavishing upon him the tenderest care. Thanks in a great measure to her solicitude, the prince’s health was soon re-established—for his illness would appear to have been much less grave than was at first supposed—and she was able to return to her children. But the hurried journey to Troyes, and the anxiety she had suffered on her husband’s account, had exhausted her slender reserve of strength, and scarcely had she reached Condé-en-Brie, than she was taken dangerously ill.

A courier, dispatched in all haste, found Condé at Vitry-le-François, whither he had followed the Court, and, though, for reasons which will presently be understood, he was extremely loath to part from Isabelle at this juncture, he felt obliged to take leave of their Majesties and return to his neglected wife. On his arrival, he found her somewhat better, but the doctors did not disguise from him that her recovery was hopeless, and that, in all probability, she had but a few weeks to live. The prince, however, an incurable optimist, declined to believe that the case was as serious as they represented, and, though he decided to remain with her, it is evident, from the following letter, written by him to his nephew, the Prince de Porcien, that he was determined to get as much amusement out of his enforced sojourn by the domestic hearth as circumstances would permit:

“My Nephew—My desire to have news of you prompts me to write you this letter, and, at the same time, to entreat that, if your convenience permits, you will come to see and console your good friend and relative, who is very wearied [ennuyé] by his wife’s serious illness. Come with your greyhounds and your horses and arms, if that be possible, and I will promise to show you as fine hunting as you could know how to find. My horse and arms will arrive here to-day, and I hope that, if you come, we shall find means, please God, to enjoy ourselves.”[52]

Meanwhile, the Court was continuing its progress. From Troyes, it proceeded to Bar-le-Duc, where Charles IX. stood sponsor to the infant son of his sister Claude and the Duke of Lorraine, and on 22 May arrived at Dijon, where it remained until the 30th, their Majesties being lodged in the palace of the old Dukes of Burgundy.

It was during the sojourn of the Court in this town that the liaison of Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil had the most scandalous dénoûment. At the Queen-Mother’s coucher, according to some writers, at an audience given by their Majesties to a deputation which had come to present them with an address of welcome, according to others, Isabelle was suddenly taken ill, and carried into Catherine’s wardrobe, where she gave birth to a fine boy, of whom she at once declared Condé to be the father.[53]

It was not the first casualty of its kind which had occurred in the ranks of the “escadron volant.” Only a little while before, a like misfortune had befallen another maid-of-honour, Mlle. de Vitry by name; but, in this case, an open scandal had been avoided. Brought to bed in the morning, Mlle. de Vitry had had the fortitude to drag herself to a ball given at the Louvre that same evening, and thus had contrived to preserve what shreds of reputation may have been left to her.[54] For a young woman who ordinarily showed so much astuteness, Isabelle, as Mézeray expresses it, had certainly “taken her measures badly.”[55]

Catherine, who still piqued herself on the outward decorum of her entourage, was beside herself with indignation. Her maids-of-honour might commit all the sins in the Decalogue with impunity, so long as they did not add to them the unforgivable one of being found out; but, once they were so maladroit as to be detected, they must expect no consideration at her hands.

However, since Isabelle was, after all, a soldier wounded in her Majesty’s service, and had done her duty nobly until she had been placed hors de combat, it is probable that no worse fate would have befallen her than dismissal from the “squadron” and the Court, had not her enemies profited by her misfortune to launch against her a most formidable accusation.

Isabelle, as we have mentioned elsewhere, possessed a biting wit, which she was accustomed to exercise freely at the expense of those who were so unfortunate as to displease her, not sparing even the most exalted personages. The sharpness of her tongue, indeed, made her as many enemies as the charms of her person gained her admirers, and often those who approached her with words of devotion on their lips were so cruelly rebuffed that they retired with vengeance in their hearts.

Among those whom she had thus contrived to offend, was Charles IX.’s former gouverneur, the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon,[56] an extremely dangerous person for a maid-of-honour to have as an enemy, since not only was he a Prince of the Blood, and a gentleman of a peculiarly vindictive character, but his wife[57] held the post of Grand Mistress of Catherine’s Household, a position which enabled her to make things extremely unpleasant for any of the Queen’s damsels of whose conduct she happened to disapprove. Nor was it long before Isabelle had good reason to regret her treatment of the prince, for the latter took an early opportunity of representing to the Grand Mistress that it was high time to introduce “a little reformation” into the Queen’s Household, and hinted that it might not be a bad plan were she to make a few inquiries as to the way in which Mlle. de Limeuil passed her time when off duty. The lady was of her husband’s opinion, and, from that moment, the maids-of-honour, and Isabelle in particular, found their opportunities for clandestine meetings with their admirers seriously curtailed; while, as time went on, the Grand Mistress began to evince an interest in Mlle. de Limeuil’s health which occasioned the object of her solicitude infinite embarrassment.

The girl, who well knew whom she had to thank for these annoyances, was furious against La Roche-sur-Yon, and made no secret of the hatred which she entertained for him. One of those to whom she expressed her opinion of the prince was the Comte de Maulevrier,[58] a great admirer of hers, who had himself no cause to love his Highness. In the summer of 1560, it had happened that Maulevrier was hunting with the prince’s only son, the Marquis de Beaupréau, a boy of thirteen. The marquis’s horse stumbled and fell; Maulevrier, who was close behind, was unable to stop his, and the animal came down with all its weight upon the unfortunate lad, who was so badly crushed that he died shortly afterwards. Although this calamity was obviously due to pure accident, La Roche-sur-Yon, who had been passionately attached to his son, conceived the most violent resentment against Maulevrier, and swore that he should answer for the boy’s life with his own. So threatening an attitude did he assume, that the count deemed it prudent to go into hiding for some time, and though, thanks to the intervention of Catherine, the bereaved father was eventually persuaded to forego his vengeance, it was only on the understanding that Maulevrier should never again venture to appear before him.

Maulevrier had no desire to do so, and carefully avoided the prince, until one day, in the previous summer, they happened to meet by accident. No sooner did La Roche-sur-Yon catch sight of the involuntary murderer, than he drew his sword and rushed upon him like a madman, and the count only saved himself from being spitted like a fowl by promptly taking to his heels.

Such being the relations between La Roche-sur-Yon and Maulevrier, it is not surprising that Isabelle should have expected to find in the latter a sympathetic listener, when she inveighed against the prince as the instigator of all the annoyances to which she and her colleagues were being subjected by the Grand Mistress, or that, when in his company, she should have occasionally indulged in that extravagant language in which angry and excitable women are accustomed to find an outlet for their wounded feelings, but to which, fortunately for them, sensible people seldom attach any importance. For how could she have imagined that Maulevrier, who had always expressed so much admiration for her, and who had himself been subjected to such unmerited persecution at the hands of La Roche-sur-Yon, would betray her confidences to their common enemy?

But Maulevrier, whether because he had some secret grudge against the girl, or, more probably, because he hoped that, by pretending to render a great service to La Roche-sur-Yon, he might persuade that personage to be reconciled to him, gave a most sinister interpretation to the expressions which the exasperated Isabelle permitted to escape her, and communicated them to the prince, with no doubt a good many exaggerations.

No steps, however, seem to have been taken by La Roche-sur-Yon in the matter until the occurrence of the scandal which we have just related, when, having decided that the moment for action had arrived, he persuaded Maulevrier to draw up and sign a formal information against Isabelle, which he lost no time in laying before the King and the Queen-Mother.

In this document, Maulevrier declared that Isabelle had on several occasions said to him: “If I were in your place, I should poison the prince”; that during the journey of the Court she had indulged in the most violent language against his Highness, whom she accused of inspiring all the annoyances which his wife had inflicted upon the Queen’s “maids,” and of having sought to injure her in a matter which closely concerned her honour; that, one evening, she had sent for him, and told him that La Roche-sur-Yon was giving a supper-party the following night, and that it would be the last that he would ever give, warning him, at the same time, not to repeat a word of what she had said, or “he would be found dead in the corner of some ditch”; that, notwithstanding this threat, he had sent warning to the prince, who had begged him to entice Mlle. de Limeuil into further confidences; that, a few days later, the Court being at Vitry, the lady had said to him: “The coup failed; the prince postponed his supper-party, but the opportunity will recur”; with which she drew from an envelope a white powder and gave him part of it, telling him to make his dog take it and he would see that in a short time the animal would be dead; and, finally, that on the morning of a state dinner given at Bar-le-Duc, Mlle. de Limeuil had remarked to him: “It is truly astonishing that the Queen-Mother has not been ill!”[59]

It was, of course, impossible for Charles IX. and Catherine to ignore so grave an accusation as that of having planned the poisoning of a Prince of the Blood, backed by evidence drawn up with such minuteness and precision of detail as to give it an air of probability. At the same time, Catherine would perhaps, in ordinary circumstances, have hesitated to accept the unsupported testimony of Maulevrier, who was not a person on whose word much reliance was usually placed. But, as La Roche-sur-Yon had, of course, foreseen, the scandal of which Isabelle had just been the cause was scarcely calculated to incline her to view the matter from a judicial standpoint; and, at her instigation, the King at once signed an order for Isabelle to be arrested and conducted to the Franciscan convent at Auxonne. Her child was taken away from her and given into the charge of a poor woman at Dijon.

On arriving at Auxonne, Isabelle was received by M. de Ventoux, governor of the town, who conducted her to the convent. Here, she was incarcerated in a little, bare, low-ceilinged room, like a prison cell, and very strictly guarded. The unfortunate girl, though still in ignorance of the charge against her, was in despair, and, we are assured, for three days and nights did nothing but groan and weep. M. de Ventoux, a kindly man, who visited her several times, was touched with compassion, and, after vainly endeavouring to console her, despatched the most alarming reports of her condition to the Court, in one of which he declared that, if it were possible for a woman to die of melancholy, then assuredly she had not long to live.

With such rapidity and secrecy had Isabelle been carried off from Dijon, that none of her relatives or friends at the Court had the least idea what had become of her. But, on receiving Ventoux’s reports, the Queen-Mother so far relented as to authorize him to transmit to the prisoner all the letters which were addressed to her, and to forward to their destination those which she wrote herself, having first taken the precaution to open and copy them, since in this way some very useful information might be obtained. Singularly enough, neither Isabelle nor her friends seemed to have had the least suspicion that their correspondence was being tampered with.

Catherine must have been disappointed if she expected to secure from these epistles any evidence in regard to the charge which had been brought against Isabelle, but, en revanche, they contained some interesting information concerning other matters. The first letters, for instance, which passed between the fair captive and M. du Fresne were peculiarly enlightening, and established beyond all possibility of doubt the character of their relations.

The enamoured Secretary of State begins by deploring that he had been unable to take farewell of the lady before the Court left Dijon; but the mere suspicion that he had done so had so enraged the Queen-Mother that to have defied her would have probably entailed his prompt disgrace. On the other hand, the Prince de Condé, whom he had taken upon himself to inform of the interesting event which had taken place at Dijon and of the subsequent disappearance of its heroine, had expressed much annoyance, because he had happened to mention that he had lent Isabelle a dressing-gown, being evidently of opinion that it was a piece of presumption for any one but himself to assist the lady. “It is very strange,” he writes, “that, being abandoned, as I was able to tell him you had been by every one, the prince should take it ill that you have been visited and succoured by those who were incurring risks in order to serve you.” However, he should not cease to employ his life and his property for her, “the person whom he loved and esteemed the most in the world.” But, at the same time, he thinks it would be perhaps advisable for her to return the dressing-gown, “since he saw clearly that it was not agreeable to the prince [Condé] that she should make use of it.” And he concludes by reminding her of the happy days they had spent together when the Court was in Normandy the previous summer, when he had received “tant de contentement.” In a postscript, he bids her burn his letter, which, in view of the fact that a copy was already in the hands of M. de Ventoux, seems a rather unnecessary precaution.

Isabelle’s reply was calculated to satisfy the most exacting of lovers. It was impossible to tell him what pleasure his letter had given her; words quite failed her to describe it. She did nothing all day but think of him, and he might rest assured that, whatever Fortune might have in store for her, she would never cease to love him. [The minx will write much the same to Condé a little later.] She sends him a scarf woven with her own fair hands, two pictures of saints which she has painted, a heart, and a book, the “Patience of Job,” which, is “fort à propos.” She concludes by kissing his hands “thousands and millions of times.”[60]

It was, as we have seen, through the medium of Du Fresne that Condé, retained by the bedside of his dying wife, was informed of the misfortunes of Isabelle. To receive such news of his mistress through the courtesy of a rival occasioned him, as may be supposed, the keenest mortification; and his jealousy reveals itself very plainly in the first letter which he addressed to the lady:

“Alas! my heart, what can I say to you, save that I am more dead than alive, seeing that I am deprived of the means of serving you, and seeing you depart[61] without knowing how I may be able to aid you? M. du Fresne often informs me that you send him news of yourself, but I, I cannot know whither you have been conducted, and I am greatly astonished, since you have the means of writing to some persons, that I may not receive your letters also. For you know that there is not a man in the world who would be so much grieved at your distress as myself, nor who, with greater gaiety of heart, would be more determined to hazard his life to do you a useful service. I am sending you one of my dressing-gowns, which has served me and you also when we were together, begging you to believe that I should prefer you to your gown, since I should be of more service to you than a sable. Let me know that you are as anxious to retain me in your good graces, now that you are a captive as when you were at liberty; for you know that, being accustomed not to share them with any one, but to be the first and the only one, I feel sure that you have not lost the good opinion that you have of me, but, on the contrary, that it is rather increased. It remains to make use of me and to give me the opportunity of coming to free you from the trouble in which you are, for you must acquaint me with the means of doing so. I have eyes which do nothing but weep, and strength which is inanimate, since it is not commanded by you.”

If Condé had been unable at first to discover the place where his Isabelle had been incarcerated, he had succeeded in getting her son into his possession; and, having received two letters from Isabelle recommending the child to his care, he hastens to relieve her maternal anxiety:

“I shall content myself by telling you that I have our son in my hands, safe, and merry and certain to live.... It is true that they had left him at the house of a poor woman, who made him lie on straw for six nights, like a hound, which I thought very strange. But if, at the beginning, those to whom he did not belong treated him like a little dog, I have taken him like a father to bring him up en prince. He deserves it, for he is the most beautiful creature that ever man saw.”

And the lovelorn prince concludes:

“If I do not see you soon, I would as lief die as live. I desire it as much or more than my salvation.” And, at the end of the monogram which replaces the signature, he writes: “Let us die together!”

On receiving this epistle, which confirmed the warning which Du Fresne had given her concerning the suspicions of Condé, Isabelle hastened to assure the prince that her heart was wholly his, and that henceforth she would communicate with him alone. Meantime, however, Condé had learned that gossip was far from unanimous in attributing the paternity of the child to him, and that the general opinion at the Court was that M. du Fresne’s claims to the honour were at least equal to his own.[62] All aflame with jealousy, he writes to his mistress:

“I assure you, my heart, that I am very greatly annoyed that people are able to find in your conduct reason to ask: ‘Whose is this child?’ which is as much as to say that you admit two persons to a like degree of favour. I do not tell you this because I believe it, as I will show you; for I will give you a proof whether I love you or no in a few days. My heart, since we have gone so far, we must raise the mask, for every one knows what has passed between us. You will be honoured and esteemed by all, since you show them, as much in small things as in great, that you do not wish to address or to receive news save from him whom you have loved more than that which you prize more dearly than yourself [i.e. her honour].... You have heard that they speak at the Court of a certain person [Du Fresne]. You must take care to silence these false reports. You need not resort to oaths to make me believe that your son is mine, for I have no more doubt of him than of those of my wife. But act in such a way that others may be able to entertain no doubt of it, and reflect that whoever sees him will say with reason that he is my son and yours, for our two faces are to be recognized in his. I implore you, my heart, to love me and never to abandon me, as you have promised; and when you remind yourself of the occasion on which it was made, I am sure that you will keep your promise to me. I send you a fur-lined dressing-gown. I should like to be near you in its place, for I cannot be so useless as not to be of as much service to you as it will be.

“Our son is very well, and is being well taken care of, and is in my hands, which is my only consolation, since I am separated from you, and is a pledge to render me for ever assured of remaining in your good graces, which is the thing which I prize the most, and more so than I have ever done.”

In a third letter, couched in equally passionate terms, the prince informs his lady-love that he has entrusted her son to a gentleman who will bring him up as one of his own children, advises her to write to the Queen-Mother to implore her clemency, and impresses upon her the importance of receiving only the servants whom he may send to her, “by which she will make it known that she loves no one save him.” He concludes by assuring her that he intends to live and die with her.

On 9 June, the bishop of the diocese, Du Puy, and the Sieur Sarlan, one of Catherine’s maîtres d’hôtel, who had received a commission from the King to investigate the charges against Isabelle, arrived at Auxonne. The prisoner was brought before them and very closely interrogated. She admitted that she had bitter cause to complain of La Roche-sur-Yon, who had not only egged on his wife to pester her with questions concerning her health, but had told Condé that he was “very blind and very credulous if he believed that Limeuil was with child by him.” At the same time, she denied absolutely that she had ever made, or even contemplated, an attempt upon the life of the prince. Nor had she ever suggested to Maulevrier that he should poison his Highness, although, on one occasion, when she and the count were in the company of a number of other persons, she had heard some one, whom she did not name, advise Maulevrier to make away with him, “in the interests of his repose.” Mlle. de Bourdeille,[63] who was one of those present, would confirm her statement.

The commissioners departed for Lyons, where the Court had just arrived, taking with them a very dignified and pathetic letter from Isabelle to the Queen-Mother:

“Madame—After having heard from the Sieurs Sarlan and Du Puy the reasons which have induced your Majesty to send them to me, it has afflicted me to such a degree that, but for the aid of God and the hope that I repose in your kindness, I should have fallen into the greatest despair that a poor creature could be in, not being so forgetful of God as to have conceived or meditated such wickedness. When it shall have pleased God to make known to you my innocence, I implore you, for the honour of those to whom I am related, to do such justice upon the false accuser as I should have deserved, had I committed such a crime.”

Meanwhile Condé had not been idle. He had sent to Auxonne one of his confidential servants, who had put himself into communication with the leading Huguenots of the town, with a view to an attempt to liberate Isabelle vi et armis, and, at the beginning of July, Ventoux, getting wind of this, wrote, in great alarm, to Catherine, declaring that he could no longer be responsible for the safety of the prisoner, and urging her removal to some place where she would be in greater security. Her Majesty thereupon despatched her first valet de chambre, Gentil, with six of her guards to Auxonne, with orders to conduct Isabelle to Vienne.

The lady was in despair when informed that she was to leave the convent, and with good reason, since it would appear that Condé’s supporters had arranged to make an attempt to carry her off a night or two later. At first, she refused to budge and threatened to kill herself; but eventually she thought better of it, and allowed herself to be conducted to the river, where she and her escort embarked in a boat to proceed to Maçon, the first stage of their journey. Scarcely, however, had they got her on board, when she was seized with a violent attack of hysteria and gave vent to the most heartrending cries. Then, for a whole day and a night she refused either to eat or drink, until Gentil began to fear that she would never reach her destination alive. At length, however, she became more tractable, partook of some food, and, asking for writing materials, indited an appealing letter to Condé, which was intercepted by Gentil and, in due course, transmitted to Catherine. It was as follows:

“Alas! my heart, have pity upon a poor creature who suffers all things for having loved you more than herself.[64] My affliction will be only pleasure, provided, that you remember me, and that I am so happy as to be the only one to possess your love. I am so afraid that my absence has the misfortune to banish me from your good graces, which tortures me more than I can describe. My heart, help me and free me from the position in which I have no more to suffer for the rest of my life. Write to the Queen in my favour and make the Maréchal de Bourdillon write.”

On reaching Maçon, Gentil decided that it was inadvisable to proceed further with so weak an escort, for the Huguenots were very strong in that part of the country, and he accordingly wrote to Catherine begging her to send reinforcements, as he was in hourly dread of being attacked and his prisoner carried off. On her side, Isabelle, more and more alarmed as to the fate in store for her, profited by the delay to write another despairing letter to Condé, which, like the first, was intercepted by the vigilant Gentil and forwarded to his mistress:

“The Queen is sending me to Lyons; if you have not compassion on me, I see myself the most miserable creature in the world, in such manner do they drag me about, with soldiers for my guards, as though I were a person who had merited death. I have no hope save in God and you. It would be well for you to write to Madame de Savoie,[65] to persuade her to obtain my pardon from the Queen. I am a more faithful, a more affectionate, slave to you than ever I was, and the greater my tortures, the more I adore you. Send to this Lyonnais country to ascertain where I may be. I believe that I shall not be far away from it. Alas! my heart, remember that you have promised to be faithful to me. Place me in such a position that, at least ere I die, I may be able to see you. Have no other heart than mine, or make me die first. I kiss your hands and feet a thousand times.”

On the arrival of the soldiers demanded by Gentil, Isabelle was conducted to Lyons and thence to Vienne, where she arrived on 18 July, and was incarcerated in the Château des Canoux. Here she was again examined, this time by two members of the Council, the Bishops of Orléans and Limoges, who were frequently employed in important negotiations. The two bishops brought Maulevrier with them and confronted him with the prisoner, who gave him, as may be supposed, an exceedingly warm reception, “liar,” “evil liver,” and “drunkard” being among the epithets which she hurled at his head. Maulevrier persisted in his charges, but could call no evidence to support them; Isabelle reiterated her denials. Their lordships, though they pretended to look very wise, could make nothing of the affair at all; but, since a man is not less a man because he happens to be a bishop, and Isabelle’s beauty and distress had not been without its effect upon them, they left her with a promise to intercede for her with the Queen.

Their intercession, however, does not appear to have had any effect, for the months passed, and the lady still remained under lock and key.

CHAPTER VI

Death of the Princesse de Condé—Question of the prince’s remarriage—The Maréchale de Saint-André’s bid for his hand—Rumours of a matrimonial alliance with the Guises—Catherine de’ Medici, alarmed at such a prospect, resolves to set Mlle. de Limeuil at liberty—Isabelle joins Condé at Valery—Intense indignation of the Huguenots at the scandalous conduct of the prince—Quarrel between Condé and Coligny—The leaders of the party take counsel together “to find a remedy for so great an evil”—The deputation of Protestant pastors—Condé declines to separate from his mistress, but eventually breaks with her—His marriage with Mlle. de Longueville—Condé persuaded by his wife to demand the return of the presents he has given his mistress—Revenge of Isabelle—Her marriage—Renewal of the civil war—Battle of Saint-Denis—Peace of Longjumeau—Flight of Condé to La Rochelle—Third war of Religion breaks out—Battle of Jarnac—Death of Condé.

Meanwhile, an event had occurred which had occasioned a great stir in both political camps. The gloomy prognostications of the Princesse de Condé’s physicians, which her husband had at first ridiculed, proved only too correct; all through the remainder of the spring and the first weeks of summer the poor lady was gradually becoming weaker, and by the middle of July it was plain that she had but a few days to live. To the last she was full of consideration for the husband who had shown so little consideration for her. “Fearing to distress him too much, if she told him herself that she felt death approaching,” writes her biographer, “the princess charged two grave personages, friends of her family, to go to Condé’s apartments, to acquaint him with what she foresaw must soon happen, and to ask to be allowed to entrust him with her last wishes in an authentic form. ‘Tell the prince’ said she to these two friends, ‘that, since God is pleased so soon to separate our bodies, I trust that at least our souls may continue to be bound inseparably together in the love that we ought to bear to our common Saviour Jesus Christ, who has delivered us so miraculously, in the eyes of all Europe, from so many enemies and dangers. Tell him also that,—to begin my will,—I constitute him the universal heir to the mass of love I have vowed to my children, and I conjure him, in loving them doubly henceforth both for himself and for me, to keep vigil in my place, so that they may be brought up in the fear of God, which I am convinced is the surest estate and patrimony that I can bequeath to them’”[66]

Condé appeared to be profoundly affected. He declared that he had received from the princess a lesson in courage which he should strive to follow out of love for her and her children; adding that the latter would always find him faithful to the last recommendations of their mother. “God, who joined us now divides us, since it pleases Him,” he exclaimed. “Oh! blessed will be the moment when He ordains that we shall be reunited in Heaven in an eternal bond!”

These pious expressions, which, though they may appear so out of place on the lips of the lover of Isabelle de Limeuil, were probably uttered in all sincerity, seem to have greatly comforted the poor princess, who then sent for two notaries and dictated to them her will.

Afterwards, she summoned her chaplain Pérussel, who, it will be remembered, had shared Condé’s captivity after Dreux, and another minister, and conversed with them on spiritual matters. On their departure, Condé returned to her bedside, and spoke to her some affectionate words. “Four things,” replied the dying princess, taking his hands in hers, “render me happy: the first is the assurance of my salvation, the second, the reputation of being a good wife, which, by God’s grace, I have always had; the third, the certainty that you are satisfied with me, because I have always as faithfully served, loved, and honoured you as it was possible for a wife, in this world, to serve, honour, and love her husband; the fourth, my joy that God leaves to my children a father and a grandmother who will bring them up in the fear of God, in accordance with my principal desire.” And, after a moment’s silence, she added: “And now I must finish my course to gain the prize which I see prepared for me at the end of the lists of this laborious career.”

Condé then withdrew, and the princess’s children entered to take farewell of her and receive her last recommendations.

Towards midnight, fearing that she would soon be too weak to make herself understood, she expressed a wish to have a final conversation with her husband. “I am sure,” said she, “that the prince will not mind being awakened for this occasion, and it would not be well to wait until I could no longer declare to him the things that God has put into my heart.”

On the arrival of Condé, every one present withdrew out of hearing, and husband and wife conversed together for nearly an hour.

ÉLÉONORE DE ROYE, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ

FROM A DRAWING BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST

The end came at eight o’clock the following morning (23 July, 1564). Condé, who had quite broken down, had retired to his own room, and one of the Huguenot ministers, who had been with the princess in her last moments, came to break the sad news to him. Dissolute as his life had been of late years, his heart was not quite corrupted, and the grief which he experienced was accentuated by remorse for the pain which his infidelities had so often caused the devoted companion who had just been taken from him. Now, probably for the first time, he seemed to realize her worth, and nothing could have been more touching than the terms in which he spoke of her to his weeping children. “Strive, my darling,” said he to his little daughter, “to resemble your mother, that God may help you as He helped her, that every one may esteem you, and that I may love you more and more, as I shall surely do if you are as she was.” Then, laying his hand on the head of the Marquis de Conti, he added: “My son, you are the first pledge of the blessing and favour of marriage which God gave to your mother and myself. See that you always give me joy and consolation, which you will do if you follow in the footsteps of your mother in the way of virtue. Recognize the traces, for fear lest you go astray along the paths of the dangerous labyrinth of this world. Sons are usually like their fathers, but you must strive to copy the virtues of your mother. For you will be told things about your father and his life that you ought not to imitate, though there are other things in him that you must follow. But in your mother ... you will find nothing which is not worthy to be a treasured example, as she was worthy of a place in the foremost ranks of virtuous women.”[67]

Condé’s grief had, for the moment, exalted him, but his impressions were always more violent than lasting, and scandal was soon to be busy again with his name.

Scarcely had the grave closed upon Éléonore de Roye than all kinds of rumours were in circulation as to her probable successor, for no one doubted that a prince in the very prime of manhood and of so “amorous a complexion” would take unto himself a second wife with as little delay as need be.

It was said that the Maréchale de Saint-André was determined to have him; and the death of the little Mlle. de Saint-André, which had occurred at the Convent of Longchamps three weeks before that of Condé’s wife, whereby the little girl’s immense fortune passed to her mother, was freely ascribed to a diabolical crime on the part of the maréchale, in order to facilitate her union with the prospective widower.

There would not appear to have been any foundation for so terrible a charge, though the maréchale, who, besides being desperately enamoured of Condé, was a very ambitious woman, was certainly prepared to move heaven and earth to secure her elevation to the rank of Princess of the Blood. No sooner did she learn that poor Éléonore de Roye’s recovery had been pronounced hopeless than, with the object of establishing claims to the expected vacancy which it would be difficult to ignore, she made the prince a present of the estate and magnificent château of Valery, near Sens, which her luxurious husband had rebuilt and furnished with the most costly magnificence. At the time when it was made, the singularity of this donation was somewhat modified by the fact that the Queen-Mother had withdrawn her objections to the marriage of the Marquis de Conti and Mlle. de Saint-André. But when, after the death of the latter had put an end to this project, the maréchale not only confirmed the gift of Valery, but added to it a considerable part of the fortune left by her daughter, it was no longer possible to disguise the motive of such unexampled generosity; and people said very unkind things, both about the giver and the prince, who had accepted, apparently without a blush, an almost regal present from one of his avowed mistresses.

Other rumours espoused Condé to Catherine de Lorraine, daughter of the late Duc de Guise, or to her widowed mother, Anne d’Este, still very beautiful; while others again united him to Mary, Queen of Scots.

The prince had no intention of gratifying the ambitions of the Maréchale de Saint-André, being of opinion that to become her husband would be to pay altogether too high a price for Valery. But he was not indisposed to a union with the Guises, for, though they had done him much injury in the past, the death of their illustrious head had deprived them of their influence, and he was of too generous a nature to cherish rancour against a fallen foe.

The Guises on their side, hated by the Huguenots, disliked by the Montmorencies, and distrusted by the Queen, were sincerely anxious for a union with Condé. At the end of December 1564, the Cardinal de Lorraine, returning from the Council of Trent, passed through Soissons, to which town the prince had come, on a visit to his sister, Catherine de Bourbon, abbess of the Convent of Notre-Dame. A very cordial interview took place between them, in which his Eminence suggested to Condé a marriage between him and Mary Stuart. The cardinal had already approached his niece on the subject, excusing the inconsistency of a Prince of the Church recommending a heretic as a husband on the ground that the Huguenots were so determined to compass his ruin that the marriage was absolutely necessary for his political salvation. It is true that he had received scant encouragement from that quarter, since the young queen strongly resented the idea that she should sacrifice her own inclinations for his Eminence’s advantage. “Truly I am beholden to my uncle,” she exclaimed, ironically. “So that it be well with him, he careth not what becometh of me.”[68] Nevertheless, the cardinal did not despair of ultimately obtaining her consent.

On leaving Soissons, the Cardinal de Lorraine proceeded to Paris, followed by “fifty arquebusiers and some hundreds of his friends and servants, with arms, pistols, and arquebuses.” On reaching Saint-Denis, he was met by a gentleman of the Maréchal de Montmorency, governor of the Île-de-France and his personal enemy, who warned him that he could not be permitted to enter the city with an armed retinue, since the edicts forbade it. The prelate, however, thought proper to ignore this warning, and, on 8 January, 1565, he and his whole company entered Paris by the Porte Saint-Denis. Near the Church of the Innocents they were met by Montmorency, at the head of a considerable force. The marshal called upon them to lay down their arms; one man refused and was immediately killed; the rest obeyed, and the cardinal, never remarkable for his personal courage, took refuge in the house of a merchant, where he remained until nightfall.[69]

This affair caused a great commotion. The partisans of the Guises assembled at Meudon, under the leadership of the Duc d’Aumale, and assumed a most threatening attitude; the Maréchal de Montmorency summoned his friends to his assistance, and, since he was known to favour the Huguenots, Coligny and a number of Protestant gentlemen hastened to Paris to offer him their services. To the general astonishment, however, Condé took the cardinal’s part and openly blamed Montmorency. “If,” said he, referring to the fracas by the Innocents, “this was intended for a jest, it was too much; if it was in earnest, too little.”

With the object of showing his sympathy with the cardinal in a more practical form, at the end of January, he, in his turn, had the pretension to enter Paris with three hundred horse. On reaching the Bastille, however, he received a message from Montmorency summoning him to retire immediately, which he did, though not without addressing a letter of protest to the King, which was the cause of violent dissensions in the Council, where the Cardinal de Bourbon took the part of his brother, and the Constable energetically defended the action of his son. On a second visit to the capital, which the prince paid a few weeks later, he assured the Bishop of Paris that he would protect the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and that he deplored the affront which had been offered the Cardinal de Lorraine; and when the Parlement complained that, in contravention of the edict, prêches had been held at his house, he answered that he had neither authorized nor attended them.

The conduct of the prince, which seemed to foreshadow a complete change of policy on his part, and to confirm the rumours already in circulation as to a matrimonial alliance with the Guises, naturally gave the greatest umbrage to the Huguenots, and the extreme section of the party, already, as we have seen, very dissatisfied with their leader, vented their annoyance in a stream of lampoons and satires. The Duc d’Aumale, in his “Histoire des Princes de Condé,” stigmatizes the Protestants as “unjust and ungrateful,” and declares that “there is no proof that Condé ever contemplated a union by marriage with the House of Lorraine.” “In any case,” continues the royal historian, “if he did ‘bind himself afresh’ to his former rivals; if he refused to take part in all the quarrels and to share all the passions which were raging around him, it was because he was sincerely desirous to obliterate the traces, and prevent the renewal, of the civil war.”

The Duc d’Aumale could not, however, have been aware, at the time when this was published, of a letter written by Mary Stuart to her aunt the Duchesse d’Arschot, from which it would appear that the project of a marriage between Condé and the beautiful young widow of François II. had not only been very favourably received by the prince, but that he had actually taken some active steps in the matter. “I hear,” writes Mary, “that the Prince de Condé has demanded my hand of my grandmother[70] and of the Cardinal de Lorraine, my uncle, and that he has made the most splendid offers imaginable, both in regard to religion and other matters.”[71]

Whatever offers Condé may have made, they had no effect upon Mary, who was now firmly resolved to marry Darnley, and was, besides, thoroughly disgusted with the unabashed selfishness of the Cardinal de Lorraine. But the Queen of Scotland was not the only card in his Eminence’s hand, and, though a match with the widowed Duchesse de Guise—whose infatuation for the fascinating Duc de Nemours was common knowledge—or with her daughter, a girl of thirteen, was not likely to prove so attractive to Condé, there was still a possibility that it might be arranged, and for months the Protestants were in a state of trepidation.

Their alarm was shared by Catherine de’ Medici, to whom the prospect of so intimate a rapprochement between the Houses of Bourbon and Lorraine was anything but pleasing. Fully sensible though her Majesty was of the importance of detaching the first Prince of the Blood from the Protestant cause, she judged that this advantage would be too dearly purchased by the subordination of the Crown to two ambitious families, which would be the inevitable consequence of their alliance; and she was determined to use every means in her power to avert such a calamity. It was, of course, the King’s prerogative to refuse to sanction a marriage of which he might happen to disapprove, but arbitrary measures seldom commended themselves to Catherine, who always preferred to gain her ends by indirect means, and shift the odium which she would otherwise incur upon the shoulders of her agents. She therefore bethought herself of Isabelle de Limeuil, who had lately been transferred from Vienne to the Château of Tournon. Here, ready to her hand, was a woman, who, as their intercepted correspondence had shown her, had contrived, notwithstanding the infidelities of Condé, to preserve all her power over him—a woman who knew better than any other how to govern that emotional and fickle heart, by associating the most incredible expressions of tenderness with the most exaggerated flatteries. If Isabelle and her prince were brought together again, if matters could be so arranged that the latter should be compelled to offer his mistress the shelter of one of his own residences, was it not probable that, in the joy of this reunion, the question of his second marriage would be relegated, for a time at least, to the background? And was it not probable, too, that the open scandal would provoke remonstrances from his co-religionists which would irritate Condé and widen the breach which existed between him and his party?

Interesting indeed must have been the letters which passed at this time between the captive of Tournon and the enamoured prince, as the result of which Isabelle was not only rescued from her prison, but conducted to her lover at Valery, the château presented to Condé by her rival—a piquant revenge, in good truth, upon the Maréchale de Saint-André for the advantage which she had taken of Isabelle’s enforced absence from the field! Unfortunately, the correspondence has not been preserved, and the only light cast upon the situation is a passage in a despatch from Smith to Cecil, dated 10 April, 1565: “The Prince de Condé has by a certain gentleman stolen Mademoiselle de Lymoel (sic) from Tournon, where she was kept, and has her with him.”[72]

And has her with him! Yes, under the same roof! “Grand Dieu! it was enough to make Calvin rise from his grave!”[73] cried the Huguenot pastors, holding up their hands in righteous horror. “Had the prince taken leave of his senses that he should choose to create a public scandal and make ‘the Religion’ a by-word in the mouths of the forward, at the very moment when Catherine and Philip of Spain were believed to be plotting its destruction? Had not the way of salvation been made sufficiently plain to him? Had not Bèze and Pérussel and l’Espine and Laboissière spread the choicest flowers of their eloquence before him, and in sermons two hours long insisted on the necessity of the leaders of the faithful leading lives that should be beyond reproach. And this was the result! Out upon him for an evil-liver and an apostate!”

The politicians of the party were scarcely less indignant than the divines, and the reappearance of Isabelle upon the scene was the signal for a very pretty quarrel between them and the prince, of which a piquant account is given in an anonymous letter in Italian in the Simancas Collection:

“I have seen a letter of Madame de Chelles,[74] from which she appears to entertain great hopes of friendship between her brother and the cardinal [de Lorraine]. My friend and I think that nothing can be founded upon the words or the acts of so frivolous a man as Condé shows himself to be, who is at present more than ever enamoured of his Limeuil. Paroceli[75] has been here four or five days, and has preached in private to his Huguenots. Languet learned from him that dissension has arisen, on the subject of la Limeuil, between Condé and Châtillon [Coligny], and subsequently between the aforesaid Condé and his followers, in such manner that Châtillon has parted from him, has come to Paris, and has withdrawn, some say to Châtillon, others to an abbey belonging to him, and that Condé’s followers have almost all abandoned him.

“The occasion of this was that a certain letter was written to Condé from Paris, at the close of which was written: ‘The young lady has come.’ Châtillon, who was standing over Condé as he read the letter, saw these words, and, guessing what they meant, said to Condé: ‘I can tell what young lady it is that has come to Paris.’ To which Condé replied in certain words which showed that Châtillon’s speech was not agreeable to him; but the matter did not go any further for the time being.

“After la Limeuil had arrived at the place to which Condé had ordered her to be conducted, and they had been seen together, certain Huguenot gentlemen went and found Condé, and began to admonish him, and, so to speak, to reprove him on the subject of his mistress. Upon which, Condé, supposing that his secret had been revealed to them by Châtillon, and that it was at his instigation that they had come to reprove him, grew angry and said many things against them, designating them spies, and then adding that it was Châtillon who had told them this, and had sent them to talk to him; and with such indignation that he went on to say much evil of Châtillon and his whole House ... accusing them of arrogance, of presumption, and of not only wishing to put themselves on a level with princes, when they were naught but gentlemen of humble rank, but even of daring to insult him; and that it was not in his nature to suffer this any longer. Through these and such-like words, and even worse, it came about that Châtillon separated himself from Condé. The greater part of the Huguenots have done likewise, so that he finds himself now almost alone.”

However, a little reflection sufficed to convince the Huguenot leaders that the discredit which it was bringing upon their Faith was not the most serious aspect of Condé’s infatuation for Isabelle; in other words, that Catherine was at the bottom of the affair, and had deliberately thrown the two together again, “with a view to the prince becoming what his brother had already become by means of la Rouet.” “Suspecting which,” continues the writer of the letter already cited, “the gentlemen of Condé’s party took counsel together to find a remedy for so great an evil, and resolved upon three courses: first, that the ministers should speak out roundly to him, representing the personal danger and disgrace of the affair, and the scandal common to the whole Religion, since he was its chief, and persuade him, if he could not keep continent, to take a wife. The second remedy, if the first did not succeed, was for the principal gentleman of the Religion, acting in common accord, and his own intimate friends, to wait upon him and address to him the same remonstrances, making him understand that, if he did not separate himself from la Limeuil, they would leave him alone; and, in effect, if he declined to do so, they would leave him. The third remedy, in the event of the first two not succeeding, was that la Limeuil should be excommunicated, anathematized, and delivered into the power of Satan.”

In accordance with these resolutions, a deputation selected from the most prominent Huguenot divines waited upon the backsliding prince at Valery and endeavoured to awaken him to a sense of the error of his ways. Condé received his reverend friends courteously enough, but declared that he “could not keep continent and could not take a wife, since it was difficult to find a person of his own rank belonging to the same religion, and impossible to find one of another religion.”

Sadly the ministers withdrew, and the lay deputation advanced to the attack. It met with anything but a cordial reception: indeed, his Highness expressed his opinion of its interference with his private affairs in such exceedingly plain language that it was obliged to beat a precipitate retreat. Whence, we are told, “the Religion found itself in great trouble and knew not what further to do, since it feared to make matters worse by excommunicating la Limeuil, Condé being of a nature so inclined to women that there was great danger lest la Limeuil should have more power over him than the Religion.”

The counsel of the more prudent members of the party was to leave things alone, and to trust to time. It proved a wise decision. Passions of this kind are more frequently nourished than overcome by opposition; while, on the other hand, the greater the facilities for enjoying the society of the enchantress, the more speedily do disillusion and lassitude arrive. After the first rapture of the reunion, Condé began to ask himself whether, after all, he was not acting very unwisely in quarrelling with his personal friends and jeopardizing his political future for the sake of a girl who had been the cause of so much scandal, and who, he had good reason to believe, had not even troubled to remain faithful to him. Isabelle, perceiving that the prince had not the least intention of regularizing their connexion, and mortified by the manner in which her name was being bandied about, began to regard Condé as the author of her misfortunes. Hence arose quarrels, tears, recriminations. Condé reproached Isabelle with her intimacy with Du Fresne and others. Isabelle retorted by accusing the prince of neglecting her for the Maréchale de Saint-André, to whom, in recognition of the gift of Valery, he had felt obliged to pay some fugitive attentions, and did not fail to take advantage of the opportunity which his acceptance of the maréchale’s calculating generosity afforded her for the exercise of her powers of sarcasm. Wit is a dangerous weapon for lovers to play with, and Isabelle’s was sharper than a two-edged sword.

At length, the situation became so unpleasant that Condé determined to put an end to it; and, towards the close of the spring, he broke of his own free will with Isabelle and was reconciled to the Protestants. They, needless to say, received the repentant prodigal with open arms and lost no time in setting to work to procure him a second wife. They found her in Mlle. de Longueville,[76] a young lady who joined to high rank and the profession of the Reformed faith considerable personal attractions, and, in September, Condé set off for Niort to obtain the King’s sanction to his marriage, “leaving the Maréchale de Saint-André dissolved in tears and regrets for having been so foolish as to consume her substance in vain expenses to acquire the quality of the wife of a Prince of the Blood.”

Catherine, though disappointed at the reconciliation between Condé and his party, was greatly relieved that the prospect of an alliance with the Guises had come to nothing; and Charles IX., on her advice, not only expressed his approval of the marriage, but authorized its celebration at the Court, according to the rites of the Protestant religion, where it took place on 5 November 1565.

The new Princesse de Condé was in many ways an estimable young woman, and the marriage, which was to be cut short by the prince’s tragic death three years later, appears to have been a happy one. She had, however, been very strictly brought up and was, moreover, of a decidedly jealous disposition, and she was determined not to permit the souvenirs of her husband to be dragged about France by his former mistresses. No sooner married, than, following the example of the Duchesse d’Étampes when she had supplanted Madame de Châteaubriand in the affections of François I., she imperiously demanded of the prince that he should require Isabelle to restore all the presents that he had made her; and Condé, who was one of those men who are quite incapable of resisting the caprices of the preferred of the moment, was mean enough to obey.

When the messenger sent by the prince informed Isabelle of the object of his visit, she flew into the most violent passion and made so terrible a scene that, had he not happened to be a Huguenot of a particularly inflexible type, he would doubtless have returned to Condé and reported the failure of his mission. As it was, he waited patiently until her fury had expended itself, and then repeated his request. The lady left the room and presently returned with a packet, in which she had placed all the jewels she had received from Condé and a portrait of the prince by a celebrated painter, the first token of his love that he had given her. Sitting down at the table, she placed the portrait before her and decorated it with an enormous pair of horns; and then contemptuously tossed it and the packet of jewels to the astonished messenger. “Take them, my friend,” said she, “and carry them to your master; I send him everything that he gave me. I have neither added nor taken away anything. Tell that beautiful princess, his wife, who has importuned him so much to demand from me what he gave me, that, if a certain nobleman—mentioning him by name—had treated her mother in the same way, and had claimed and taken away all that he had given her, she would be as poor in trinkets and jewels as any demoiselle of the Court. Well, let her make use of the paste and the baubles; I leave them to her.”[77]

It is to be hoped that Condé had the grace to feel ashamed of himself when his messenger returned; but since, in common with the majority of his contemporaries, he possessed a pretty thick skin, we are inclined to doubt whether such a reproof would have occasioned him more than a momentary vexation. Public opinion, we are told, however, judged him very severely, and declared that he had acted most ungenerously “in having despoiled this poor lady, who had honestly earned such presents par la sueur de son corps.”[78]

In one of his despatches, written soon after the rupture between the prince and Isabelle, Sir Thomas Smith announced that “the Prince de Condé had married la Limoel (sic) to a gentleman of his and given them 15,000 livres a year.”[79] The Ambassador had been misinformed, for Isabelle was still single at the time, nor was this project, if it really existed, ever realized. The lady, however, notwithstanding the notoriety of her relations with Condé and the criminal charge which had been brought against her, was not long in finding a husband.

There was at this time in Paris an Italian banker named Scipion Sardini, who, by the favour of Catherine de’ Medici, who appears to have dipped pretty frequently into his purse, had contrived to amass an immense fortune, and “from a little sardine had grown into a big whale.” He had recently acquired the estate and the beautiful château of Chaumont-sur-Loire and the title of baron to go with it, and desired to find a high-born damsel who would be willing to share his prosperity. Since however, high-born damsels were, for the most part, inclined to look askance at a suitor whose origin was shrouded in impenetrable obscurity, he cast his eyes in the direction of Isabelle, who, he judged, could not afford to be so fastidious; and laid his heart, his fortune, and his brand-new title at her feet. She condescended to accept them, and went to live at the sumptuous Hôtel Sardini, situated in the Quartier Saint-Marcel, at the corner of the Rue de la Barre. The union was not an unqualified success, for Isabelle’s misfortunes had soured her temper, and the pretentious parvenu whom she had married had good reason to regret that he had not contented himself with a more amiable, if less aristocratic, consort. A great lady still, despite her lost reputation, she never forgave her husband his lowly origin, and permitted no opportunity to pass of allowing him to see how much she despised him; and, whenever he had been so unfortunate as to displease her, which appears to have happened pretty frequently, she would remind the poor man of the honour which she, a woman of such noble birth, had done him in giving him her hand. To which Sardini would reply, not without reason: “I have done more for you; I have dishonoured myself in order to restore you your honour!” Then Isabelle would hurl at him a perfect volley of invective, until, fearing that it might be followed by missiles of a more substantial kind, he would fly from her presence and take refuge in his own apartments.

These perpetual quarrels, however, did not prevent this ill-assorted couple from having three children: two sons and a daughter, of whom the latter, Madeleine Sardini, is said to have inherited not a little of her mother’s beauty. Unfortunately, she appears to have inherited her quarrelsome disposition as well, as did her brothers, for, after their parents’ death, they went to law over the division of the Sardini fortune and provided the gentlemen of the long robe with some very pretty pickings.