The object of this embassy was kept a profound secret; some historians assert that it was undertaken with a view to effect a marriage between the Dauphin and the Infanta of Spain, while others lean to the belief that Philip had instructed Don Pedro to endeavour to prevail upon Henry to abandon his alliance with the Dutch. Whatever were its motive, the ambassador, who had reached Paris on the 7th of July, quitted the capital on the 22nd of the same month, having only succeeded in irritating the King by his overbearing and supercilious demeanour.[388]
It would appear that during the present year Henri IV indulged his passion for field sports to such an excess as tended seriously to alarm those who were anxious for his preservation; and it indeed seems as though, at this period, his leisure hours were nearly divided between his two favourite diversions of hunting and high play. Sully informs us, however, that the King busied himself with the embellishments of Fontainebleau, and in erecting the Place Dauphine at Paris; but adds that these great works, which were necessary to the convenience of the people, might have been carried much further if the monarch would have followed his advice and been less profuse in his personal expenditure, particularly as regarded his gambling transactions. He advances, as a proof of this assertion, that he was called upon on one occasion to deliver to Eduardo Fernandez, a Portuguese banker (who, according to Bassompierre, had made a visit of speculation to the French Court, and who unhesitatingly provided the nobles with large sums, either on security or at immense interest), the enormous amount of thirty-four thousand pistoles, for which the reckless monarch had become his debtor. "I frequently received similar orders," he proceeds to say, "for two or three thousand pistoles, and a great many others for less considerable sums." [389]
It is scarcely doubtful that the ennui occasioned by the waning passion of Henri IV for Madame de Verneuil at this period induced him, even more than formerly, to seek amusement and occupation at the gaming-table, where he was emulated by his profuse and licentious nobles, while even his Queen and the ladies of the Court entered with avidity into the exciting pastime. We have frequent record of the habitual high play of Marie de Medicis, who found in it a solace for her sick-room and a diversion from her domestic annoyances, and thus the dangerous propensity of the monarch was heightened by the presence of the loveliest women of the land and the charm and fascination of wit and intellect.
Madame de Verneuil was in despair; the coveted sceptre was sliding from within her grasp, and with the ill-judged hope of regaining the affections of her royal lover by exciting his jealousy, she encouraged the attention of the Duc de Guise, who, undismayed by the previous attempt of his brother to divert the affections of another of the royal favourites and its unfortunate result, at length openly avowed himself the suitor of the brilliant Marquise, and even promised to make her his wife; while the scandalous chroniclers of the time do not hesitate to affirm that the Prince de Joinville himself had previously done the same, but that his proverbial fickleness had protected him from so gross a mésalliance.
In the case of the Duke, however, the affair wore a more serious aspect; and so earnest did he appear in his professions that Madame de Verneuil, anxious at once to secure an illustrious alliance and to revenge herself upon the monarch, caused the banns of marriage between the Prince and herself to be published with some slight alteration in their respective names, which did not, however, suffice to deceive those who had an interest in subverting her project; and the fact was accordingly communicated to the King, upon whom it produced an effect entirely opposite to that which had been contemplated by the vanity of the lady, who had been clever enough to procure from M. de Guise a written promise similar to that which she had formerly extorted from the monarch. Four years previously the knowledge of such a perfidy on her part would have overwhelmed Henry with anxiety, jealousy, and grief, but his passion for the Marquise had, as we have seen, long been on the decline, and his only feeling was one of indignation and displeasure. To the Marquise herself he simply expressed his determined and unalterable opposition to the alliance, but to the Duke he was far less lenient, reminding him of the former offences of himself and his family, and forbidding him to pursue a purpose so distasteful to all those who had his honour at heart This was a fatal blow to Madame de Verneuil, and one which she was never destined to overcome. Clever as she was, she had suffered herself to forget that youth is not eternal, and that passion is even more evanescent than time; and thus, by a last impotent effort to assert a supremacy to which she could no longer advance any claim, she only succeeded in extinguishing in the heart of the King the last embers of a latent and expiring attachment.[390]
FOOTNOTES:
[356] The carême-prenant includes the three days which precede Ash-Wednesday.
[357] L'Etoile, vol. iii. pp. 411, 412.
[358] Benjamin de Rohan, Duc de Soubise, was the grandson of Jean de Parthenay-Soubise, and the son of Réné-Rohan. He was a zealous supporter of the reformed faith, and was present at several sieges; but becoming dissatisfied with the citizens of La Rochelle, with whom he took refuge in 1622, he passed over to England, to solicit assistance; a proceeding which compelled the French Court to declare him guilty of lèse-majesté, and he subsequently refused to return to his own country when a general amnesty was proclaimed.
[359] L'Etoile, vol. iii. pp. 414, 415.