There was, indeed, no more lovely girl at Court than the daughter of the Constable. Cardinal Bentivoglio, the Papal Nuncio at Brussels, who saw her towards the close of the same year, has left us the following description of her:
“She was then sixteen years old, and her loveliness was adjudged by all men to accord with the fame thereof. She was very fair; her eyes and all her features full of charm; an ingenuous grace in all her gestures and in her manner of speaking. Her beauty owed its power to itself alone, since she did not bring to its aid any of the artifices of which women are wont to make use.”[146]
It is certain, however, that Condé would have received the proposition in a very different spirit if he had been aware of the reasons which had prompted the King to make it; for it was not the young prince’s interests, but his own convenience, that his Majesty had in mind.
One day in January, 1609, it happened that Henri IV. was passing through the great gallery of the Louvre, when he came upon a bevy of young ladies of the Court practising for a ballet, nymphs of Diana, armed for the chase. Among them was Mlle. de Montmorency, whose charms, enhanced by the classical costume she was wearing, made so profound an impression upon the susceptible monarch that he was quite unable to take his eyes off her.
Shortly after this encounter, his Majesty was laid up with an attack of gout. Several of the ladies of the Court came to visit him, and among those who were most assiduous in their attentions was the Duchesse d’Angoulême, who was invariably accompanied by Mlle. de Montmorency, her niece. Henri IV. was fifty-five, and his hair and beard, whitened by a life of peril and hardship, made him look considerably older. But his heart was still young, and he was as amorous as he had been at twenty. From the first, he took the keenest pleasure in Mlle. de Montmorency’s society; soon he was hopelessly in love, although for some time he appears to have deluded himself with the belief that his interest in the damsel was of a paternal nature only.
The fair Charlotte was already betrothed, with the King’s approval, to François de Bassompierre, a handsome young noble of Lorraine, high in favour with his Majesty, and one of the most redoubtable lady-killers of the Court. Henri, however, having himself become a candidate for the lady’s affections, had no mind to endure a rival so formidable as the fascinating Bassompierre, and, accordingly, decided that the projected marriage must be broken off.
One night, when Bassompierre was on duty in the King’s chamber, endeavouring to soothe his master’s pain by reading to him M. d’Urfé’s sentimental romance “l’Astrée,” then at the height of its vogue, Henri informed him, after some preamble, that he intended to marry him to Mlle. d’Aumale, and to revive the duchy of that name in his favour. “You wish then, Sire, to give me two wives!” exclaimed the astonished courtier. “Baron,” rejoined the King, “I wish to speak to you as a friend. I am not only in love, but distracted about Mlle. de Montmorency. If you marry her and she loves you, I shall hate you. If she loves me, you will hate me. It were better that the marriage were broken off, lest it should mar the good understanding between us, and destroy the affection I entertain for you. I have decided to marry her to my nephew, the Prince de Condé, and to keep her near the person of my wife. She will be the solace and support of the old age upon which I am about to enter. I shall give her to my nephew, who is only twenty, and prefers hunting a thousand times to ladies’ society; and I desire no other favour from her than her affection, without pretending to anything further.”
Bassompierre, who was above all things a courtier, seeing that the King was determined, and that, unless he submitted with a good grace, he would lose both his bride and the royal favour, protested his willingness to obey, adding the hope that “this new affection would bring his Majesty as much joy as it would occasion him pain, but for his consideration for his Majesty.”[147] His chagrin was, nevertheless, intense, and when, next morning, the young lady having been acquainted with the change that had been made in the disposition of her hand, greeted her too facile lover with an expressive shrug of her pretty shoulders and a glance of the most withering disdain, his grief and mortification were such that he fled precipitately to his lodging, where, he assures us, he spent three days without food or sleep.
The betrothal of Condé and Charlotte de Montmorency took place shortly afterwards (2 March, 1609), in the great gallery of the Louvre. The Constable gave his prospective son-in-law 100,000 écus; while the King granted him an increase of his pension and a present of 150,000 livres. The bride received 18,000 livres from his Majesty, for the purchase of jewellery, as well as a magnificent trousseau. Owing to the necessity of obtaining the Papal dispensation for the union of cousins,[148] the marriage-ceremony was postponed until 16 May, when it was celebrated at Chantilly, “very inexpensively, but very gaily.”
This gaiety was not of long duration. Scarcely had the young couple rejoined the Court, which was then at Fontainebleau, than the King began to lay the closest siege to the princess’s heart and strove by every means in his power to gain her affection. The girl, flattered by the homage of her Sovereign, of which she perhaps did not divine the end, was far from discouraging his attentions, and, if we are to believe Tallemant des Réaux, appeared one evening on the balcony of her apartments in a peignoir, with her hair falling over her shoulders, in order to please the King, who was transported with admiration. “Dieu!” cried she, “how foolish he is!” And she laughed heartily.