The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1610a | Page 2

a
singular fascination of look and gesture, and a winning, almost
childlike, simplicity of manner. Without feminine artifice or

commonplace coquetry, she seemed to bewitch and subdue at a glance
men of all ranks, ages, and pursuits; kings and cardinals, great generals,
ambassadors and statesmen, as well as humbler mortals whether
Spanish, Italian, French, or Flemish. The Constable, an ignorant man
who, as the King averred, could neither write nor read, understood as
well as more learned sages the manners and humours of the court. He
had destined his daughter for the young and brilliant Bassompierre, the
most dazzling of all the cavaliers of the day. The two were betrothed.
But the love-stricken Henry, then confined to his bed with the gout,
sent for the chosen husband of the beautiful Margaret.
"Bassompierre, my friend," said the aged king, as the youthful lover
knelt before him at the bedside, "I have become not in love, but mad,
out of my senses, furious for Mademoiselle de Montmorency. If she
should love you, I should hate you. If she should love me, you would
hate me. 'Tis better that this should not be the cause of breaking up our
good intelligence, for I love you with affection and inclination. I am
resolved to marry her to my nephew the Prince of Conde, and to keep
her near my family. She will be the consolation and support of my old
age into which I am now about to enter. I shall give my nephew, who
loves the chase a thousand times better than he does ladies, 100,000
livres a year, and I wish no other favour from her than her affection
without making further pretensions."
It was eight o'clock of a black winter's morning, and the tears as he
spoke ran down the cheeks of the hero of Ivry and bedewed the face of
the kneeling Bassompierre.
The courtly lover sighed and--obeyed. He renounced the hand of the
beautiful Margaret, and came daily to play at dice with the King at his
bedside with one or two other companions.
And every day the Duchess of Angouleme, sister of the Constable,
brought her fair niece to visit and converse with the royal invalid. But
for the dark and tragic clouds which were gradually closing around that
eventful and heroic existence there would be something almost comic
in the spectacle of the sufferer making the palace and all France ring
with the howlings of his grotesque passion for a child of fifteen as he
lay helpless and crippled with the gout.
One day as the Duchess of Angouleme led her niece away from their
morning visit to the King, Margaret as she passed by Bassompierre

shrugged her shoulders with a scornful glance. Stung by this expression
of contempt, the lover who had renounced her sprang from the dice
table, buried his face in his hat, pretending that his nose was bleeding,
and rushed frantically from the palace.
Two days long he spent in solitude, unable to eat, drink, or sleep,
abandoned to despair and bewailing his wretched fate, and it was long
before he could recover sufficient equanimity to face his lost Margaret
and resume his place at the King's dicing table. When he made his
appearance, he was according to his own account so pale, changed, and
emaciated that his friends could not recognise him.
The marriage with Conde, first prince of the blood, took place early in
the spring. The bride received magnificent presents, and the husband a,
pension of 100,000 livres a year. The attentions of the King became
soon outrageous and the reigning scandal of the hour. Henry,
discarding the grey jacket and simple costume on which he was wont to
pride himself, paraded himself about in perfumed ruffs and glittering
doublet, an ancient fop, very little heroic, and much ridiculed. The
Princess made merry with the antics of her royal adorer, while her
vanity at least, if not her affection, was really touched, and there was
one great round of court festivities in her honour, at which the King and
herself were ever the central figures. But Conde was not at all amused.
Not liking the part assigned to him in the comedy thus skilfully
arranged by his cousin king, never much enamoured of his bride, while
highly appreciating the 100,000 livres of pension, he remonstrated
violently with his wife, bitterly reproached the King, and made himself
generally offensive. "The Prince is here," wrote Henry to Sully, "and is
playing the very devil. You would be in a rage and be ashamed of the
things he says of me. But at last I am losing patience, and am resolved
to give him a bit of my mind." He wrote in the same terms to
Montmorency. The Constable, whose conduct throughout the affair was