“Upon this the King expected that she would stoop to kiss him and take leave of him, as had been arranged. But she said to him: ‘Monsieur, I am going to crave a parting favour of you, which I wish you to promise that you will not refuse me. It is that you will restore to me my intendant Barbin.’ The King, who was not expecting this demand, looked at her without making any reply. She said to him again: ‘Monsieur, do not refuse me this request that I am now making you.’ But he continued to look at her without answering. She added: ‘Perhaps it is the last I shall ever make you.’ And then, seeing that he answered nothing, she said: ‘Orsu!’ and then stooped and kissed him. The King made a reverence and then turned his back. Upon that M. de Luynes advanced to take leave of the Queen, and spoke to her some words which I could not hear, nor yet those in which she answered him. But after he had kissed the hem of her gown, she added that she had made a request to the King to restore Barbin to her, and that he would be doing her an agreeable service and a singular pleasure in prevailing upon the King to grant her request, which was not so important that he ought to refuse it. As M. de Luynes was about to reply, the King cried five or six times: ‘Luynes, Luynes, Luynes!’ And upon that M. de Luynes, making the Queen understand that he was obliged to go after the King, followed him. Then the Queen leaned against the wall between the two windows and wept bitterly. M. de Chevreuse [Joinville] and I kissed the hem of her gown, weeping likewise; but either she was unable to see us by reason of her tears, or she did not wish to speak to or look at us. This caused me to wait to take leave of her a second time, which I did as she was returning to her chamber. But she did not see me, or wish to see me, any more than on the first occasion.
“Upon that the King placed himself on the balcony before the chamber of the Queen, his wife, to see the departure of the Queen, and, after she had left the Louvre, he hastened into his gallery to see her again as she passed over the Pont-Neuf. Then he entered his coach and went to the Bois de Vincennes.”
On May 5, the rebellious princes Vendôme, Mayenne and Bouillon, who, on learning of Concini’s death, had hastened to lay down their arms, open the gates of their fortresses and disband their soldiers, as though they had been fighting only against the favourite, came to Vincennes, accompanied by a number of their principal followers, to salute the King and assure him of their allegiance. Although Louis XIII must have known very well that no reliance whatever could be placed in their professions of loyalty, and that, unless he made it worth their while to keep the peace, they would rise again on the first plausible pretext, they were received as though they had taken up arms for, and not against, the royal authority. On May 12 a declaration of the King reinstated them in all their property, honours, and offices, and excused them having taken up arms, “although unlawfully,” on the ground that they had done so in order to defend themselves against the tyranny of the Maréchal d’Ancre.
Logic would have demanded that the reconciliation should have gone further, and that Condé, whose arrest had been the pretext for the revolt, should have been released from the Bastille and reinstated as chief of the Council. Nothing of the kind happened, however. Louis XIII entertained a strong antipathy to his turbulent kinsman, which need occasion no surprise; Luynes feared that he might attempt to dispute his ascendancy over the young King; while the other princes, who were bound to their chief neither by affection nor even by party-loyalty, did not press for his liberation. And so he remained a prisoner.
The King stayed at Vincennes for some days and then returned to Paris; but, shortly afterwards, removed to Saint-Germain. After having been so long confined to the capital and a sedentary life, he was revelling in his new-found liberty, and the opportunity it afforded him of indulging in his favourite sports of hawking and hunting.
While the Court was at Saint-Germain, the Princess de Condé arrived there to ask the King’s permission to share her husband’s captivity. Although, for some time before Condé’s arrest, the relations between him and his wife had been very cool, the princess, on learning of the misfortune that had befallen him, had shown real magnanimity. Without a moment’s delay, she set out for Paris—she was at Valery at the time—sent the prince messages assuring him of her sympathy and devotion, and begged the Queen-Mother to allow her to join him. Her request, however, was refused, and she received orders to leave Paris at once and return to Valery.
Now, however, she did not plead in vain, and Louis XIII not only granted her request, but gave her permission to take with her “one demoiselle and her little dwarf, who had begged his Majesty to consent to his not abandoning his mistress.” The same day (May 26) the princess entered the Bastille, “where she was received by Monsieur le Prince with every demonstration of affection, nor did he leave her in repose until she had said that she forgave him.”[124]
In the following October, the authorities of the Bastille were discovered to be conniving at a secret correspondence which Barbin was carrying on with the Queen-Mother, and first Bournonville, the Lieutenant of the fortress, and brother of the Governor, the Baron de Persan, and subsequently Persan himself, were arrested.[125] Bassompierre was then sent with sixty Swiss to take charge of the Bastille, but he did not have the Prince and Princesse de Condé under his supervision, as, about a month previously, they had been transferred to the Château of Vincennes, where Condé was allowed a great deal more liberty than had been permitted him in Paris. Bassompierre only remained at the Bastille about ten days, at the end of which he received orders to hand over the command to the new favourite’s youngest brother, Brantes.
In December Bassompierre went to Normandy to attend the assembly of the Notables which Louis XIII was holding at Rouen. While he was there, news arrived that the Princesse de Condé had given birth to a still-born child and was in a critical condition; and the King being desirous of sending some important personages to make inquiries on her behalf, or, in the event of the princess being dead, to offer his condolences to Condé, Bassompierre and the Duc de Guise offered to go. They set out in a coach, a kind of conveyance which did not usually lend itself to rapid travelling; but, by arranging for an unusual number of relays, reached Paris the same day, and made the return journey with similar expedition. Bassompierre assures us that never before had a journey by coach been made in so short a time at that season of the year.
The princess recovered, “though she was more than forty-eight hours without movement or feeling,” and “never was a person in greater extremity without dying.”[126]