Catherine must have been disappointed if she expected to secure from these epistles any evidence in regard to the charge which had been brought against Isabelle, but, en revanche, they contained some interesting information concerning other matters. The first letters, for instance, which passed between the fair captive and M. du Fresne were peculiarly enlightening, and established beyond all possibility of doubt the character of their relations.
The enamoured Secretary of State begins by deploring that he had been unable to take farewell of the lady before the Court left Dijon; but the mere suspicion that he had done so had so enraged the Queen-Mother that to have defied her would have probably entailed his prompt disgrace. On the other hand, the Prince de Condé, whom he had taken upon himself to inform of the interesting event which had taken place at Dijon and of the subsequent disappearance of its heroine, had expressed much annoyance, because he had happened to mention that he had lent Isabelle a dressing-gown, being evidently of opinion that it was a piece of presumption for any one but himself to assist the lady. “It is very strange,” he writes, “that, being abandoned, as I was able to tell him you had been by every one, the prince should take it ill that you have been visited and succoured by those who were incurring risks in order to serve you.” However, he should not cease to employ his life and his property for her, “the person whom he loved and esteemed the most in the world.” But, at the same time, he thinks it would be perhaps advisable for her to return the dressing-gown, “since he saw clearly that it was not agreeable to the prince [Condé] that she should make use of it.” And he concludes by reminding her of the happy days they had spent together when the Court was in Normandy the previous summer, when he had received “tant de contentement.” In a postscript, he bids her burn his letter, which, in view of the fact that a copy was already in the hands of M. de Ventoux, seems a rather unnecessary precaution.
Isabelle’s reply was calculated to satisfy the most exacting of lovers. It was impossible to tell him what pleasure his letter had given her; words quite failed her to describe it. She did nothing all day but think of him, and he might rest assured that, whatever Fortune might have in store for her, she would never cease to love him. [The minx will write much the same to Condé a little later.] She sends him a scarf woven with her own fair hands, two pictures of saints which she has painted, a heart, and a book, the “Patience of Job,” which, is “fort à propos.” She concludes by kissing his hands “thousands and millions of times.”[60]
It was, as we have seen, through the medium of Du Fresne that Condé, retained by the bedside of his dying wife, was informed of the misfortunes of Isabelle. To receive such news of his mistress through the courtesy of a rival occasioned him, as may be supposed, the keenest mortification; and his jealousy reveals itself very plainly in the first letter which he addressed to the lady:
“Alas! my heart, what can I say to you, save that I am more dead than alive, seeing that I am deprived of the means of serving you, and seeing you depart[61] without knowing how I may be able to aid you? M. du Fresne often informs me that you send him news of yourself, but I, I cannot know whither you have been conducted, and I am greatly astonished, since you have the means of writing to some persons, that I may not receive your letters also. For you know that there is not a man in the world who would be so much grieved at your distress as myself, nor who, with greater gaiety of heart, would be more determined to hazard his life to do you a useful service. I am sending you one of my dressing-gowns, which has served me and you also when we were together, begging you to believe that I should prefer you to your gown, since I should be of more service to you than a sable. Let me know that you are as anxious to retain me in your good graces, now that you are a captive as when you were at liberty; for you know that, being accustomed not to share them with any one, but to be the first and the only one, I feel sure that you have not lost the good opinion that you have of me, but, on the contrary, that it is rather increased. It remains to make use of me and to give me the opportunity of coming to free you from the trouble in which you are, for you must acquaint me with the means of doing so. I have eyes which do nothing but weep, and strength which is inanimate, since it is not commanded by you.”
If Condé had been unable at first to discover the place where his Isabelle had been incarcerated, he had succeeded in getting her son into his possession; and, having received two letters from Isabelle recommending the child to his care, he hastens to relieve her maternal anxiety:
“I shall content myself by telling you that I have our son in my hands, safe, and merry and certain to live.... It is true that they had left him at the house of a poor woman, who made him lie on straw for six nights, like a hound, which I thought very strange. But if, at the beginning, those to whom he did not belong treated him like a little dog, I have taken him like a father to bring him up en prince. He deserves it, for he is the most beautiful creature that ever man saw.”
And the lovelorn prince concludes:
“If I do not see you soon, I would as lief die as live. I desire it as much or more than my salvation.” And, at the end of the monogram which replaces the signature, he writes: “Let us die together!”
On receiving this epistle, which confirmed the warning which Du Fresne had given her concerning the suspicions of Condé, Isabelle hastened to assure the prince that her heart was wholly his, and that henceforth she would communicate with him alone. Meantime, however, Condé had learned that gossip was far from unanimous in attributing the paternity of the child to him, and that the general opinion at the Court was that M. du Fresne’s claims to the honour were at least equal to his own.[62] All aflame with jealousy, he writes to his mistress: