The cortège was a most imposing one, for Catherine wished to impress the people and the sovereigns whom she was to meet by the magnificence of the royal retinue. The whole of the Court followed the King—princes, ministers, gentlemen, and ladies—and there was a veritable cohort of pages and lackeys, wearing his Majesty’s livery of blue, red, and white, all the pages being dressed in velvet. The military escort was a very large one, and comprised not only all the Household troops, but several companies of men-at-arms. The Constable marshalled the procession, and directed its movements as he would have done that of an army on the march.[50]
Champagne was first visited. The Court stopped for a few days at Sens, where the young King was given a magnificent reception, and then moved on to Troyes, which was reached on 27 March. In this town, where the negotiations for peace with England were finally concluded, Condé “fell sick of the palsy or apoplexy, which took him at tennis, and a fever upon it,”[51] and his condition appeared sufficiently grave for his wife, who was then at the Château of Condé-en-Brie, to be summoned to nurse him. The devoted woman, although suffering herself, lost not a moment in hastening to her faithless husband’s side, and in lavishing upon him the tenderest care. Thanks in a great measure to her solicitude, the prince’s health was soon re-established—for his illness would appear to have been much less grave than was at first supposed—and she was able to return to her children. But the hurried journey to Troyes, and the anxiety she had suffered on her husband’s account, had exhausted her slender reserve of strength, and scarcely had she reached Condé-en-Brie, than she was taken dangerously ill.
A courier, dispatched in all haste, found Condé at Vitry-le-François, whither he had followed the Court, and, though, for reasons which will presently be understood, he was extremely loath to part from Isabelle at this juncture, he felt obliged to take leave of their Majesties and return to his neglected wife. On his arrival, he found her somewhat better, but the doctors did not disguise from him that her recovery was hopeless, and that, in all probability, she had but a few weeks to live. The prince, however, an incurable optimist, declined to believe that the case was as serious as they represented, and, though he decided to remain with her, it is evident, from the following letter, written by him to his nephew, the Prince de Porcien, that he was determined to get as much amusement out of his enforced sojourn by the domestic hearth as circumstances would permit:
“My Nephew—My desire to have news of you prompts me to write you this letter, and, at the same time, to entreat that, if your convenience permits, you will come to see and console your good friend and relative, who is very wearied [ennuyé] by his wife’s serious illness. Come with your greyhounds and your horses and arms, if that be possible, and I will promise to show you as fine hunting as you could know how to find. My horse and arms will arrive here to-day, and I hope that, if you come, we shall find means, please God, to enjoy ourselves.”[52]
Meanwhile, the Court was continuing its progress. From Troyes, it proceeded to Bar-le-Duc, where Charles IX. stood sponsor to the infant son of his sister Claude and the Duke of Lorraine, and on 22 May arrived at Dijon, where it remained until the 30th, their Majesties being lodged in the palace of the old Dukes of Burgundy.
It was during the sojourn of the Court in this town that the liaison of Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil had the most scandalous dénoûment. At the Queen-Mother’s coucher, according to some writers, at an audience given by their Majesties to a deputation which had come to present them with an address of welcome, according to others, Isabelle was suddenly taken ill, and carried into Catherine’s wardrobe, where she gave birth to a fine boy, of whom she at once declared Condé to be the father.[53]
It was not the first casualty of its kind which had occurred in the ranks of the “escadron volant.” Only a little while before, a like misfortune had befallen another maid-of-honour, Mlle. de Vitry by name; but, in this case, an open scandal had been avoided. Brought to bed in the morning, Mlle. de Vitry had had the fortitude to drag herself to a ball given at the Louvre that same evening, and thus had contrived to preserve what shreds of reputation may have been left to her.[54] For a young woman who ordinarily showed so much astuteness, Isabelle, as Mézeray expresses it, had certainly “taken her measures badly.”[55]
Catherine, who still piqued herself on the outward decorum of her entourage, was beside herself with indignation. Her maids-of-honour might commit all the sins in the Decalogue with impunity, so long as they did not add to them the unforgivable one of being found out; but, once they were so maladroit as to be detected, they must expect no consideration at her hands.
However, since Isabelle was, after all, a soldier wounded in her Majesty’s service, and had done her duty nobly until she had been placed hors de combat, it is probable that no worse fate would have befallen her than dismissal from the “squadron” and the Court, had not her enemies profited by her misfortune to launch against her a most formidable accusation.
Isabelle, as we have mentioned elsewhere, possessed a biting wit, which she was accustomed to exercise freely at the expense of those who were so unfortunate as to displease her, not sparing even the most exalted personages. The sharpness of her tongue, indeed, made her as many enemies as the charms of her person gained her admirers, and often those who approached her with words of devotion on their lips were so cruelly rebuffed that they retired with vengeance in their hearts.