"Five hundred gentlemen!" cried the princess; "why, 't is a veritable army!"
"Which will add to the difficulties of our journey. I should have preferred five or six faithful servitors only to all this display; we could more easily conceal our movements from Monsieur de Saint-Aignan. Now it will be almost impossible to reach the South without being molested."
"If we are molested, so much the better!" cried the princess; "for if we are molested we will fight, and we shall win; Monsieur de Condé's spirit will march with us."
Lenet glanced at the dowager as if to ask her opinion also; but Charlotte de Montmorency, who grew to womanhood during the civil wars of Louis XIII. and had seen so many noble heads bend to enter a prison, or roll upon the scaffold for having sought to hold themselves erect, sadly passed her hand across her brow, laden with painful memories.
"Yes," said she, "we are reduced to that alternative; to hide or to fight,—a frightful state of things! We were living in peace, with such glory as God had bestowed upon our house; we had no other desire, at least I hope that no one of us had any other, than to remain in the station to which we were born,—and lo! the exigencies of the time force us to contend against our master."
"Madame," interposed the younger princess, impetuously, "I look with less anguish than your Highness upon the necessity to which we are reduced. My husband and my brother are undergoing confinement unworthy of their rank; that husband and that brother are your sons; furthermore, your daughter is proscribed. These facts assuredly justify whatever enterprises we may undertake."
"True," said the dowager, with melancholy resignation; "true, I endure it all with more patience than yourself, madame; but it is because it seems as if it were our destiny to be proscribed or imprisoned. I had no sooner become the wife of your husband's father, than I was compelled to leave France, pursued by the love of King Henri IV. We had no sooner returned than we were consigned to Vincennes, pursued by the hatred of Cardinal de Richelieu. My son, who is in prison to-day, was born in prison, and after thirty-two years has renewed his acquaintance with the room in which he was born. Alas! your father-in-law, Monsieur le Prince, was right in his gloomy prophecies. When the result of the battle of Rocroy was made known to him, when he was taken into the great hall hung with flags captured from the Spaniards, he said, turning to me: 'God knows the joy that my son's exploit affords me; but remember, madame, that the more glory our family acquires, the greater will be the misfortunes that overtake it. If it were not that I bear the arms of France, too noble a blazonry to be cast aside, I would take for my crest a falcon betrayed and recaptured by the ringing of his bells, with this legend: Fama nocet.' We have made too much noise in the world, my daughter, and that is what injures us. Do not you agree with me, Lenet?"
"Madame," Lenet replied, deeply afflicted by the memories awakened by the princess, "your Highness is right; but we have gone too far to retreat now; more than that; in circumstances like our present ones, it is most essential to make up our minds promptly. We must not deceive ourselves as to our situation. We are free only in appearance; the queen has her eye upon us, and Monsieur de Saint-Aignan is blockading us. The question we have to solve is, how we are to leave Chantilly despite the queen's vigilance and Monsieur de Saint-Aignan's blockade."
"Leave Chantilly! why, we will leave it with heads erect!" cried Madame la Princesse.
"I am of the same opinion," said the princess dowager. "The Condés are not Spaniards, and they do not play false. They are not Italians, and they do not resort to trickery. What they do, they do in broad daylight, with heads erect."