“Condé then, says Laperrière, the night beginning to fall, purchased a pillion at Couçy, and mounted his wife behind him on horseback.” Sully shook with laughter; but fearing to offend his master, suppressed it as well as he could. “Her two attendants mounted behind two of the suite, the guides being in advance. It rained heavily. Pardieu! I can hardly bear to speak of it. My dear Charlotte in such a condition! The night was dark; but Condé rode on like a devil incarnate to Castellin, the first village across the frontier. When she was taken down, Charlotte fainted.” The tears ran down Henry’s cheeks as he said this. “She fainted; and then Laperrière, convinced of some treason on the part of my nephew, despatched his son to tell me these particulars. Now, Sully,” and the King rose suddenly and seized his hand, shaking off the sorrow that had overcome him during the narrative, “now tell me, what am I to do? I would lose my Crown rather than not succour her.”
“Do nothing, Sire,” replied Sully quietly.
“How, Sully! Do nothing?”
“Yes, Sire; I advise you—I implore you, do nothing. If you leave Condé to himself he will be laughed at. Even his friends will ridicule his escapade. In three months he will be back again at Court with the Princess, ashamed of himself. Meantime Madame la Princesse will see foreign Courts, acquire the Spanish manner from the Archduchess, and return more fascinating than ever. On the other hand, if you pursue him, you will exalt him into a political victim; all your Majesty’s enemies will rally round him.”
Excellent advice, which the King was too infatuated to follow! Forgetting all decency, and even the law of nations, he insisted on punishing Condé as a rebel, and called on the Spanish Government formally to release the Princess. Spain refused; and this ridiculous passion may be said to have been the approximate cause of that formidable alliance against Spain in which, at the time of his death, Henry was about to engage.
The favour which Henry had shown his Protestant subjects had long rankled in the minds of the Catholics. He was held to be a renegade and a traitor. It was affirmed that his conversion was a sham, to which he lent himself only the more effectually to advance the interests of the reformed faith. While he gave himself up to amorous follies and prepared for foreign wars, a network of hate, treachery, and fanaticism was fast closing around him. Enemies and spies filled the Louvre, and dogged his every movement. Already the footsteps of the assassin approached.
After the birth of the Dauphin a strong political party had gathered round Marie de’ Medici. Her constant dissensions with the King, her bitter complaints, and the scandal of his private life, afforded sufficient grounds for elevating her into a kind of martyr.
The intrigues of Concini, whose easy manners, elegant person, and audacious counsels had raised him from a low hanger-on at Court into the principal adviser of his royal mistress, gradually contrived to identify her interests with those of the great feudal princes, still absolute sovereigns in their own territory. The maintenance of the Catholic Church against heresy, and the security of the throne for her son, were the ostensible motives of this coalition. But the bond between Marie and her chief supporters, the powerful Ducs de Bouillon and d’Epernon, was in reality a common hatred of Henry and a bitter jealousy of Sully, whose clear intellect and firm hand had directed with such extraordinary sagacity the helm of state throughout Henry’s long and stormy reign.
Evil influences, which displayed themselves in predictions, warnings, and prophesies, were abroad. The death of the King would at once raise Marie, as Regent for her son, to sovereign power, and throw the whole control of the State into the hands of her adherents. How far Marie was implicated in the events about to happen can never be known, and whether she listened to the dark hints of her Italian attendants, that by the King’s death alone she could find relief. But undoubtedly the barbarous cruelty with which Concini and his wife were afterwards murdered by Henry’s friends had regard to this suspicion. Whether the Duc d’Epernon knew beforehand of the conspiracy, and insured his master’s death by a final thrust when he had already been struck by the assassin, or whether Henriette d’Entragues, out of revenge for the King’s passion for the Princesse de Condé, herself instigated Ravaillac to the act, must ever remain a mystery.
Marie de’ Medici, urged by the Concini, and advised by her friend the Duc d’Epernon, was at this time unceasing in her entreaties to the King to consent to her coronation at Saint-Denis. According to her varying mood she either wept, raved and stamped about the room, or kissed, coaxed, and cajoled him. And there was cause for her pertinacity. Henry’s weak compliances with Henriette d’Entragues’ pretensions, her residence in the Louvre, and her boastings of that unhappy promise of marriage, had given occasion for questions to arise touching the legitimacy of the Dauphin. Those who were politically opposed to the King would be ready, at any moment after his death, to justify rebellion on the pretence of a prior contract invalidating his present marriage.