On that they parted, with a final injunction from Sully that Henry should see the Princesse de Conde no more.
“I swear to you, Grand Master, that I will use restraint and respect the sacred tie I formed between my nephew and Charlotte solely so that I might impose silence upon my own passion.”
And the good Sully writes in comment upon this: “I should have relied absolutely upon these assurances had I not known how easy it is for a heart tender and passionate as was his to deceive itself”—which is the most amiable conceivable way of saying that he attached not the slightest faith to the King’s promise.
Nevertheless he went about the task of making the peace between the royal couple with all the skill and tact that experience had taught him; and he might have driven a good bargain on his master’s behalf but for his master’s own weakness in supporting him. Maria de’ Medici would not hear of the banishment of the Concinis, to whom she was so deeply attached. She insisted with perfect justice that she was a bitterly injured woman, and refused to entertain any idea of reconciliation save with the condition that arrangements for her coronation as Queen of France—which was no more than her due—should be made at once, and that the King should give an undertaking not to make himself ridiculous any longer by his pursuit of the Princess of Conde. Of the matters contained in the letter of Vaucelas she denied all knowledge, nor would suffer any further inquisition.
From Henry’s point of view this was anything but satisfactory. But he yielded. Conscience made a coward of him. He had wronged her so much in one way that he must make some compensating concessions to her in another. This weakness was part of his mental attitude towards her, which swung constantly between confidence and diffidence, esteem and indifference, affection and coldness; at times he inclined to put her from him entirely; at others he opined that no one on his Council was more capable of the administration of affairs. Even in the indignation aroused by the proof he held of her disloyalty, he was too just not to admit the provocation he had given her. So he submitted to a reconciliation on her own terms, and pledged himself to renounce Charlotte. We have no right to assume from the sequel that he was not sincere in the intention.
By the following May events proved the accuracy of Sully’s judgment. The court was at Fontainebleau when the last bulwark of Henry’s prudence was battered down by the vanity of that lovely fool, Charlotte, who must be encouraging her royal lover to resume his flattering homage. But both appear to have reckoned without the lady’s husband.
Henry presented Charlotte with jewels to the value of eighteen thousand livres, purchased from Messier, the jeweller of the Pont au Change; and you conceive what the charitable ladies of the Court had to say about it. At the first hint of scandal Monsieur de Conde put himself into a fine heat, and said things which pained and annoyed the King exceedingly. Henry had amassed a considerable and varied experience of jealous husbands in his time; but he had never met one quite so intolerable as this nephew of his. He complained of it in a letter to Sully.
“My friend,—Monsieur the Prince is here, but he acts like a man possessed. You will be angry and ashamed at the things he says of me. I shall end by losing all patience with him. In the meanwhile I am obliged to talk to him with severity.”
More severe than any talk was Henry’s instruction to Sully to withhold payment of the last quarter of the prince’s allowance, and to give refusals to his creditors and purveyors. Thus he intended also, no doubt, to make it clear to Conde that he did not receive a pension of a hundred thousand livres a year for nothing.
“If this does not keep him in bounds,” Henry concluded, “we must think of some other method, for he says the most injurious things of me.”