The discovery that he had been the dupe of his ambition was not the only mortification which Condé had to endure. If he were at bottom but a lukewarm adherent of the Reformed Faith, if in the negotiations which had preceded the Peace of Amboise he had been not unmindful of his own interests, he was none the less sincerely anxious that the rights guaranteed to the Protestants by that treaty should be observed; and his persistence in defending them drew upon him the hatred of the extreme Catholics. So exasperated, indeed, were the fanatical Parisians against him that for some months his friends considered it unsafe for him to appear in the capital, even in the suite of the King, and on one occasion when he did venture there, he narrowly escaped being assassinated.
In one of his despatches to Cecil, Middlemore gives the following account of the affair:—
“On the 9th inst., the King went from Bois de Vincennes to Paris, as well to keep the people from sedition as to assist at the Feast of Corpus Christi, which was the next day. Condé (who had refused to go thither) was won to accompany him, and on the morrow brought him to Our Lady Church,[38] where he left him at the door, without entering. These ceremonies passed, the King, about 7 p.m., came back to bed to Bois de Vincennes, accompanied by his mother and the Prince. As they passed the town-gates,[39] they found 600 horsemen, well-armed and mounted, who were assembled to slay the Prince and all his, if they could have taken him out of the presence of the King; but perceiving the King, they divided themselves on both sides of the way, and suffered him to pass quietly, on whose right hand at that time the Prince was, and the Queen-Mother on his left. The Princess, his wife, coming in her coach a little after, was assailed by them, and would have been murdered had not the cochier bestirred himself; and such gentlemen as were about her cried to them that it was not the Princess of Condé, but the Queen’s maids, which kept them from shooting their pistols at her, having them ready bent, until they overtook the King, in whose presence (when they saw that they had failed of the Prince and Princess) they killed a captain of the Prince[40] at the side of his wife’s coach, and took five or six of his gentlemen prisoners, and retired. This outrage is greatly stomached by the Prince, who has since been assured that some of the House of Guise did ‘dress’ him this party; and therefore he told the Queen, before the whole Council, that he will not tarry in the Court unless the whole House of Guise retire from thence; and so has desired her to consider which of them shall do the King better service, and that the others may be commanded forthwith to dislodge.”[41]
On the other hand, the zealots of Condé’s own party, who had so bitterly denounced the Peace, could not forgive his want of enthusiasm, nor the very plain language in which he rebuked their insulting behaviour towards the Catholics in those districts in which the latter happened to be in a minority. They accused him of “swimming betwixt two waters,” “of playing the Machiavelli,” and of seeking to use both parties for his own ends.[42] “In their eyes,” observes the Duc d’Aumale, “his desire for the maintenance of peace was nothing but the indifference of gratified ambition, or the forgetfulness of duty amidst the intoxication of pleasure.”[43]
If Condé’s efforts on behalf of his co-religionists should have sheltered him from such accusations, his private life, it must be admitted, was very far from being in accordance with the austere religion which he professed, and was calculated to arouse grave apprehensions among the Protestants. Deceived in his ambition, mortified by the hostility which his well-intentioned efforts had been received by the extremists of both parties, he had turned to pleasure for consolation and surrendered himself unreservedly to all the temptations of that gay and dissolute Court. His days were passed in the hunting-field, the tennis-court, and the tilt-yard; his nights at the ball, the play, or the card-table, and often in more questionable amusements. Grave Huguenots who came to lay their grievances before him were indignant to find the chief of their party, who should have been occupying himself with the interests of religion and setting an example of godly living to those about him, mingling in all the profane diversions of the Court, as though he had not a care in the world, and inexpressibly shocked to learn that he was forgetting his devoted wife in the embraces of “Midianitish women.”
For Isabelle de Limeuil, if she occupied the premier place in Condé’s affections, could not claim a monopoly of them. His Highness, in point of fact, disdained few bonnes fortunes, and the complaisant beauties of Catherine’s Court were generally ready to meet the advances of the first Prince of the Blood a good deal more than halfway.
Among those who entered the lists against Isabelle, the most redoubtable was Marguerite de Lustrac, the widow of the unfortunate Maréchal de Saint-André, so foully slain at Dreux. Although no longer in her first youth, Madame la Maréchale was still one of the most beautiful and fascinating women at the Court—“la Marguerite de douceur,”[44] a contemporary writer calls her. She was also extremely wealthy and gave herself the airs of a queen, being always attended by an immense retinue, which included cadets of the noblest families in France.
Feeling the need of consolation in her bereavement, the lady cast a favourable eye in the direction of Condé, and, piqued by his indifference—he was just then in the middle of his honeymoon with Isabelle—soon conceived for him the most violent passion. Since sighs and languishing glances did not suffice to bring him to her side, she resolved to have recourse to other means. By the Maréchal de Saint-André she had had a daughter, who was one of the greatest heiresses in France. This daughter had for some time past been destined for the young Henri de Lorraine, who, by the tragic death of his father, had now become Duc de Guise, and she had even been confided to the care of the widowed duchess. But the maréchale, having decided that the surest means of subjugating Condé was to appeal to his interests, suddenly demanded that her daughter should be sent back to her, repudiated her engagements with the Guises, and offered the girl to the prince, for his eldest son, Henri, Marquis de Conti, now twelve years old.
The prospect of an alliance which would not only bring great wealth into his family, but inflict a cruel humiliation on the hated Guises was naturally very favourably received by Condé, and the enamoured maréchale did not fail to take full advantage of the frequent interviews between her and the object of her passion which the affair, of course, necessitated. Nevertheless, she did not succeed in weaning the Prince from Isabelle, and had to rest content with the few crumbs of affection which he condescended to bestow upon her.
Rumours of his Highness’s amorous adventures were not long in reaching Geneva, where they aroused both indignation and alarm. Had the delinquent been a less exalted personage, he would probably have been straightway excommunicated; but Calvin and Bèze, though exasperated by the carelessness with which he was compromising their common cause, knew very well that the first Prince of the Blood was an asset with which the party could not possibly dispense. They knew, too, that his amour-propre had already been deeply wounded by the reproaches that had been addressed to him at the time of the Peace of Amboise, and that it was necessary to spare his feelings as much as possible; and, accordingly, contented themselves by addressing to him, in the name of their afflicted Church, a letter of remonstrance, couched in studiously moderate terms: