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.