It was a wise decision, since there were embarrassments enough within half-a-mile of the Louvre. The Princes of the Blood had returned; Soissons, three days after the death of Henri IV; Condé, in the middle of July. The former complained that the regency had been settled in his absence, and demanded the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. To appease him, Marie de’ Medici gave him the post of governor of Normandy and a gratification of 200,000 crowns. Condé, to the Regent’s great relief, was apparently well-disposed towards the new government, and, to confirm him in his peaceable intentions, she purchased for 400,000 crowns the Hôtel de Gondi, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and presented it to him, together with furniture to the value of 40,000 crowns; confirmed him in all his offices and appointments; increased his pension to 200,000 crowns, and gave him a large sum to pay his debts. The Regent hoped, by setting a price upon them, to keep within bounds all the ambitions of the grandees; it was her system of government. She paid Guise’s debts, and authorised him to marry the immensely wealthy widow of the Duc de Montpensier, a union to which, for political reasons, Henri IV would never have consented; she promised to pay the debts of the Duc de Nevers; she accorded to all the governors the right of appointing their successors.
“The grandees did not weary of receiving, and said to one another: ‘The time of kings has passed, and that of great nobles and princes has come; we must take every advantage of it.’ ” Their arrogance and ostentation knew no bounds. They seldom left their houses unless accompanied by numerous and brilliant escorts. Fifteen hundred cavaliers went to meet Condé on the day of his arrival in Paris; the Duc de Guise had a suite of five or six hundred horse. The young King remained almost alone in the Louvre, and Marie de’ Medici was obliged to reconstitute the two hundred gentlemen halberdiers, disbanded by Henri IV, from motives of economy.
Happily for the Crown, the grandees were divided, and such parties as did exist were merely associations of a few covetous nobles, animated by no common motive except that of filling their pockets. The Guises, flattered and lavishly paid, boasted of their loyalty to the Regent. Bouillon was at enmity with Sully, like himself a chief of the Protestants. The Prince de Conti had for some years been on bad terms with his brother, the Comte de Soissons, and at the beginning of 1611 their antipathy to one another found vent in a violent quarrel, in which Guise, whose sister, it will be remembered, Conti had married, found himself involved, and which threatened for a moment to develop into a sort of civil war.
“It happened,” writes Bassompierre, “that, three days after these nuptials [the marriage of Guise to the Duchesse de Montpensier], the Prince de Conti quarrelled with the Comte de Soissons, his brother, because their coaches had collided in passing one another, and their coachmen had fought. M. de Guise, whom the Queen had desired, that same evening, to go to M. de Conti to compose this quarrel, set out the following morning from the Hôtel de Montpensier, where he had passed the night, to go to the Abbey of Saint-Germain, where the Prince de Conti was lodging, and was accompanied by twenty-five or thirty horse. He happened to pass the Hôtel de Soissons, which was on his way, and this gave offence to Monsieur le Comte, who summoned his friends and told them that M. de Guise had come to defy him. Thereupon M. de Guise’s friends flocked to the Hôtel de Guise in such numbers that there were more than a thousand gentlemen assembled there. Monsieur le Comte sent to beg Monsieur le Prince to come to him, and together they proceeded to the Louvre to demand of the Queen that she should call M. de Guise to account for his insolence. Nevertheless, Monsieur le Prince was playing in this affair the part of the friendly arbitrator, and said that he should take neither side, and only desired to reconcile the parties and to prevent disorder.
“This tumult lasted all that day and the following one, upon which the Queen, apprehending graver disturbances, gave directions that the chains should be made ready to be put up at the first order, and that, in every quarter, the citizens should be prepared to take up arms on the instant that the command to do so was sent them.
“However, all the day following was employed in seeking means to accommodate the affair, each of the Princes having a captain of the Gardes du Corps near his person to protect him. In the evening, Monsieur le Prince sent to ask M. de Guise to send him one of his confidential friends; and M. de Guise, having taken counsel with the princes and nobles who supported him, as to whom they should choose to act as envoy, finally, on their advice, asked me to go.”
Bassompierre then goes on to relate at great length his interview with Condé, to whom he pointed out that Guise could have had no intention of “defying” Monsieur le Comte, since, if such had been his object, he would have sallied forth with a much more imposing retinue than a mere score or so of attendants, and would have passed before the front entrance of the Hôtel de Soissons, whereas he had only passed the corner of the house. The prince appears to have been greatly impressed by this argument, and, after Bassompierre had been backwards and forwards several times between Condé’s house and the Hôtel de Guise, the momentous affair was satisfactorily settled.
But it did not end here, so far as he himself was concerned. For “Monsieur le Comte was mortally offended with those who had assisted M. de Guise in his quarrel, and particularly with me, who had formerly professed to be his servant; and, to revenge himself upon me, he determined that I should see Antragues no more.”
The prince accordingly sought an interview with Madame d’Entragues, whom he reproached with allowing her family to be dishonoured by the notorious intimacy between Bassompierre and her younger daughter, adding that, as he was distantly related to the d’Entragues, he felt that his own honour was concerned in the matter.
Now, it had happened that, in the previous August, Marie d’Entragues had given birth to a son, of whom Bassompierre did not deny the paternity; indeed, on the lady informing him that she proposed to present him with a pledge of her affection, he had, following the famous example of Henri IV with her elder sister, given his inamorata a letter containing a promise of marriage in the event of her bearing him a son. But this letter was written merely for the purpose of appeasing the wrath of Madame d’Entragues, who was threatening to turn her erring daughter out of the house. For Bassompierre had not the least intention of regularising his connection with this too-celebrated beauty, of whom, if he were the most favoured, he was far from being the only successful admirer; indeed, to do so would mean the loss of a considerable fortune, since his mother had threatened to disinherit him if he married the lady.[83] He had, therefore, at the same time, demanded and obtained from Marie d’Entragues a letter which purported to be an answer to his own, in which she expressly disclaimed any intention of taking advantage of his offer. This, in the opinion of “three famous advocates” whom he had taken the precaution to consult, effectually discharged him from his obligation.