On the same day, the fugitive page, Belcastel, was executed in effigy. As for Corbais, the valet de chambre, who had fled with the page and had been trapped so neatly outside the gates of Poitiers, we are not told what was decided upon in regard to him. He is not mentioned again in the proceedings.
After the execution of Brilland, the proceedings against the Princesse de Condé were continued. The Prince de Condé and the Comte de Soissons demanded to be received as parties to the prosecution, and their request was granted by the commissioners. The princess once more appealed to the Parlement of Paris, which issued a third decree, forbidding Conti and Soissons to pursue the affair except before the Parlement, and ordering the arrest of the commissioners and the seizure and sequestration of their property.
This decree, like the two which had preceded it, was treated with contempt, since the Parlement was, of course, powerless to enforce it, and on 19 July the commissioners directed that the princess should be brought to trial, but that, on account of her pregnancy, the trial should not begin until forty days after her confinement. In the meanwhile, she was very strictly guarded in the house of the Sieur de Saint-Mesme, governor of Saint-Jean-d’Angely, in which she had been shut up ever since her arrest, and only permitted to see a very few persons. “During the six months that she was enceinte,” writes Fiefbrun, “she was retained in her lodging, subjected to a thousand slanders, and interrogated frequently by the chosen and incompetent judges, not as a great princess, but as a simple demoiselle, without any regard to her rank or her privileges. I leave all those who have heard it spoken about to imagine how many anguishes, how much despair, assailed her soul during that long time, in which she was not permitted to speak or to confer with any one save two or three of her intimates, without any other counsel or assistance.”
On 1 September, 1588, six months after the death of her husband, the captive princess gave birth to a son, Henri de Bourbon, second of that name, and third Prince de Condé. Fiefbrun gravely assures us that, at the moment of the boy’s birth, “an extraordinary light was observed in the heavens, and that, on the day of his baptism, the sky being serene and cloudless, a clap of thunder was heard, which several persons who understood meteors regarded as of good augury.”
Less importance, however, was attached to these happy prognostications than to a circumstance which appeared to remove the suspicion on which the charge against the princess had been principally based, namely, that she was with child by the page Belcastel, and had poisoned her husband to escape his just vengeance. This was the striking resemblance which the infant prince bore to the late Prince de Condé, which was admitted even by some who had until then been inclined to believe in the guilt of the princess. “To-day, at noon precisely,” wrote the governor of Saint-Jean-d’Angely to the Duc de Thouars, “Madame la Princesse, your sister, has been delivered of the most beautiful prince imaginable, and with more resemblance (so far as one can judge at his age) to the late Monseigneur, his father, than one can describe. For which I praise God, as do an infinite number of honourable people, your servants.”
And Gilbert, the mayor of the town, wrote that “he had seen to-day the dead father born again in a child so like him in every respect that there was not a man living but was of opinion that never had son so closely resembled his father.”
Desmoustiers, the pastor of the Protestant Church of Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and Delacroix, the late prince’s chaplain, bore similar testimony, the former declaring that the boy resembled his father “en tout et partout”; while the latter concluded his letter by observing: “Thus does Our Lord (just Judge) cause the truth concerning the poisoning to be known.”[133]
Whether it was that the birth of a son had given the Princesse de Condé a certain prestige with the Protestants, disposed to see in this child a hope for the future, or that the want of proofs rendered the prosecution difficult to continue, or that the King of Navarre’s attention was occupied by weightier matters, the investigation was not resumed, and the members of the commission which had been appointed to conduct it dispersed. The princess, nevertheless, remained in captivity, although she now enjoyed a certain amount of liberty, since she went twice a week to see her little son, who had been put out to nurse at Mazeroy, near Saint-Jean-d’Angely; and a path across the fields between Beaufief and the road leading to that town, which she generally followed, bears to this day the name of “le chemin de la princesse.”[134] She was unable to obtain either the trial before the Parlement of Paris which she had repeatedly demanded or her liberty, and she appealed in vain to her relatives, to the neighbouring nobility, and to every person of importance whom chance happened to bring to Saint-Jean-d’Angely, to use their influence on her behalf. But neither her relatives nor the different nobles to whom she addressed herself seemed disposed to take any active steps in her favour, and it was left to a magistrate, the Président de Thou, to be the first to interest himself in the forsaken woman.
In the summer of 1589, de Thou, charged with a mission from Henri IV., passed through Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and the princess, since she was unable either to receive or to visit him herself, had the happy idea of sending to him her daughter Éléonore and the little Henri, with a request that he would accord them his protection. The kind heart of the worthy president was touched, and he promised to do everything in his power on behalf of the princess and her children. Several years passed, however, before circumstances permitted him to render any material assistance to his illustrious clients.
Henri IV., as the King of Navarre had now become, did not appear to cast any doubt upon the legitimacy of the little prince, since he consented to stand godfather to him, and conferred upon him indirectly the government of Guienne, which he himself had held before his accession to the throne. But this informal acknowledgment carried little weight, and, so long as the Princesse de Condé was not exonerated from the terrible charge which was still hanging over her, the boy’s position remained doubtful and precarious. Moreover, when, after the conversion of Henri IV. and the submission of Paris, tranquillity was to some degree restored, and the new King’s authority better established, the late prince’s brothers wished to recommence the proceedings against their sister-in-law, and urged his Majesty to declare her child incapable of succeeding to the throne. For some time their animosity frustrated all the efforts of de Thou on behalf of the princess and her son, but at length he succeeded in outmanœuvring them.