Among those whom she had thus contrived to offend, was Charles IX.’s former gouverneur, the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon,[56] an extremely dangerous person for a maid-of-honour to have as an enemy, since not only was he a Prince of the Blood, and a gentleman of a peculiarly vindictive character, but his wife[57] held the post of Grand Mistress of Catherine’s Household, a position which enabled her to make things extremely unpleasant for any of the Queen’s damsels of whose conduct she happened to disapprove. Nor was it long before Isabelle had good reason to regret her treatment of the prince, for the latter took an early opportunity of representing to the Grand Mistress that it was high time to introduce “a little reformation” into the Queen’s Household, and hinted that it might not be a bad plan were she to make a few inquiries as to the way in which Mlle. de Limeuil passed her time when off duty. The lady was of her husband’s opinion, and, from that moment, the maids-of-honour, and Isabelle in particular, found their opportunities for clandestine meetings with their admirers seriously curtailed; while, as time went on, the Grand Mistress began to evince an interest in Mlle. de Limeuil’s health which occasioned the object of her solicitude infinite embarrassment.
The girl, who well knew whom she had to thank for these annoyances, was furious against La Roche-sur-Yon, and made no secret of the hatred which she entertained for him. One of those to whom she expressed her opinion of the prince was the Comte de Maulevrier,[58] a great admirer of hers, who had himself no cause to love his Highness. In the summer of 1560, it had happened that Maulevrier was hunting with the prince’s only son, the Marquis de Beaupréau, a boy of thirteen. The marquis’s horse stumbled and fell; Maulevrier, who was close behind, was unable to stop his, and the animal came down with all its weight upon the unfortunate lad, who was so badly crushed that he died shortly afterwards. Although this calamity was obviously due to pure accident, La Roche-sur-Yon, who had been passionately attached to his son, conceived the most violent resentment against Maulevrier, and swore that he should answer for the boy’s life with his own. So threatening an attitude did he assume, that the count deemed it prudent to go into hiding for some time, and though, thanks to the intervention of Catherine, the bereaved father was eventually persuaded to forego his vengeance, it was only on the understanding that Maulevrier should never again venture to appear before him.
Maulevrier had no desire to do so, and carefully avoided the prince, until one day, in the previous summer, they happened to meet by accident. No sooner did La Roche-sur-Yon catch sight of the involuntary murderer, than he drew his sword and rushed upon him like a madman, and the count only saved himself from being spitted like a fowl by promptly taking to his heels.
Such being the relations between La Roche-sur-Yon and Maulevrier, it is not surprising that Isabelle should have expected to find in the latter a sympathetic listener, when she inveighed against the prince as the instigator of all the annoyances to which she and her colleagues were being subjected by the Grand Mistress, or that, when in his company, she should have occasionally indulged in that extravagant language in which angry and excitable women are accustomed to find an outlet for their wounded feelings, but to which, fortunately for them, sensible people seldom attach any importance. For how could she have imagined that Maulevrier, who had always expressed so much admiration for her, and who had himself been subjected to such unmerited persecution at the hands of La Roche-sur-Yon, would betray her confidences to their common enemy?
But Maulevrier, whether because he had some secret grudge against the girl, or, more probably, because he hoped that, by pretending to render a great service to La Roche-sur-Yon, he might persuade that personage to be reconciled to him, gave a most sinister interpretation to the expressions which the exasperated Isabelle permitted to escape her, and communicated them to the prince, with no doubt a good many exaggerations.
No steps, however, seem to have been taken by La Roche-sur-Yon in the matter until the occurrence of the scandal which we have just related, when, having decided that the moment for action had arrived, he persuaded Maulevrier to draw up and sign a formal information against Isabelle, which he lost no time in laying before the King and the Queen-Mother.
In this document, Maulevrier declared that Isabelle had on several occasions said to him: “If I were in your place, I should poison the prince”; that during the journey of the Court she had indulged in the most violent language against his Highness, whom she accused of inspiring all the annoyances which his wife had inflicted upon the Queen’s “maids,” and of having sought to injure her in a matter which closely concerned her honour; that, one evening, she had sent for him, and told him that La Roche-sur-Yon was giving a supper-party the following night, and that it would be the last that he would ever give, warning him, at the same time, not to repeat a word of what she had said, or “he would be found dead in the corner of some ditch”; that, notwithstanding this threat, he had sent warning to the prince, who had begged him to entice Mlle. de Limeuil into further confidences; that, a few days later, the Court being at Vitry, the lady had said to him: “The coup failed; the prince postponed his supper-party, but the opportunity will recur”; with which she drew from an envelope a white powder and gave him part of it, telling him to make his dog take it and he would see that in a short time the animal would be dead; and, finally, that on the morning of a state dinner given at Bar-le-Duc, Mlle. de Limeuil had remarked to him: “It is truly astonishing that the Queen-Mother has not been ill!”[59]
It was, of course, impossible for Charles IX. and Catherine to ignore so grave an accusation as that of having planned the poisoning of a Prince of the Blood, backed by evidence drawn up with such minuteness and precision of detail as to give it an air of probability. At the same time, Catherine would perhaps, in ordinary circumstances, have hesitated to accept the unsupported testimony of Maulevrier, who was not a person on whose word much reliance was usually placed. But, as La Roche-sur-Yon had, of course, foreseen, the scandal of which Isabelle had just been the cause was scarcely calculated to incline her to view the matter from a judicial standpoint; and, at her instigation, the King at once signed an order for Isabelle to be arrested and conducted to the Franciscan convent at Auxonne. Her child was taken away from her and given into the charge of a poor woman at Dijon.
On arriving at Auxonne, Isabelle was received by M. de Ventoux, governor of the town, who conducted her to the convent. Here, she was incarcerated in a little, bare, low-ceilinged room, like a prison cell, and very strictly guarded. The unfortunate girl, though still in ignorance of the charge against her, was in despair, and, we are assured, for three days and nights did nothing but groan and weep. M. de Ventoux, a kindly man, who visited her several times, was touched with compassion, and, after vainly endeavouring to console her, despatched the most alarming reports of her condition to the Court, in one of which he declared that, if it were possible for a woman to die of melancholy, then assuredly she had not long to live.
With such rapidity and secrecy had Isabelle been carried off from Dijon, that none of her relatives or friends at the Court had the least idea what had become of her. But, on receiving Ventoux’s reports, the Queen-Mother so far relented as to authorize him to transmit to the prisoner all the letters which were addressed to her, and to forward to their destination those which she wrote herself, having first taken the precaution to open and copy them, since in this way some very useful information might be obtained. Singularly enough, neither Isabelle nor her friends seemed to have had the least suspicion that their correspondence was being tampered with.