The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1610a | Page 3

odious and pitiable, promised to do his best to induce the Prince,
instead of playing the devil, to listen to reason, as he and the Duchess
of Angouleme understood reason.
Henry had even the ineffable folly to appeal to the Queen to use her
influence with the refractory Conde. Mary de' Medici replied that there
were already thirty go-betweens at work, and she had no idea of being
the thirty-first--[Henrard, 30].

Conde, surrounded by a conspiracy against his honour and happiness,
suddenly carried off his wife to the country, much to the amazement
and rage of Henry.
In the autumn he entertained a hunting party at a seat of his, the Abbey
of Verneuille, on the borders of Picardy. De Traigny, governor of
Amiens, invited the Prince, Princess, and the Dowager-Princess to a
banquet at his chateau not far from the Abbey. On their road thither
they passed a group of huntsmen and grooms in the royal livery.
Among them was an aged lackey with a plaister over one eye, holding a
couple of hounds in leash. The Princess recognized at a glance under
that ridiculous disguise the King.
"What a madman!" she murmured as she passed him, "I will never
forgive you;" but as she confessed many years afterwards, this act of
gallantly did not displease her.'
In truth, even in mythological fable, Trove has scarcely ever reduced
demi-god or hero to more fantastic plight than was this travesty of the
great Henry. After dinner Madame de Traigny led her fair guest about
the castle to show her the various points of view. At one window she
paused, saying that it commanded a particularly fine prospect.
The Princess looked from it across a courtyard, and saw at an opposite
window an old gentleman holding his left hand tightly upon his heart to
show that it was wounded, and blowing kisses to her with the other:
"My God! it is the King himself," she cried to her hostess. The princess
with this exclamation rushed from the window, feeling or affecting
much indignation, ordered horses to her carriage instantly, and
overwhelmed Madame de Traigny with reproaches. The King himself,
hastening to the scene, was received with passionate invectives, and in
vain attempted to assuage the Princess's wrath and induce her to
remain.
They left the chateau at once, both Prince and Princess.
One night, not many weeks afterwards, the Due de Sully, in the Arsenal
at Paris, had just got into bed at past eleven o'clock when he received a
visit from Captain de Praslin, who walked straight into his
bed-chamber, informing him that the King instantly required his
presence.
Sully remonstrated. He was obliged to rise at three the next morning, he
said, enumerating pressing and most important work which Henry

required to be completed with all possible haste. "The King said you
would be very angry," replied Praslin; "but there is no help for it. Come
you must, for the man you know of has gone out of the country, as you
said he would, and has carried away the lady on the crupper behind
him."
"Ho, ho," said the Duke, "I am wanted for that affair, am I?" And the
two proceeded straightway to the Louvre, and were ushered, of all
apartments in the world, into the Queen's bedchamber. Mary de' Medici
had given birth only four days before to an infant, Henrietta Maria,
future queen of Charles I. of England. The room was crowded with
ministers and courtiers; Villeroy, the Chancellor, Bassompierre, and
others, being stuck against the wall at small intervals like statues, dumb,
motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. The King, with his hands behind
him and his grey beard sunk on his breast, was pacing up and down the
room in a paroxysm of rage and despair.
"Well," said he, turning to Sully as he entered, "our man has gone off
and carried everything with him. What do you say to that?"
The Duke beyond the boding "I told you so" phrase of consolation
which he was entitled to use, having repeatedly warned his sovereign
that precisely this catastrophe was impending, declined that night to
offer advice. He insisted on sleeping on it. The manner in which the
proceedings of the King at this juncture would be regarded by the
Archdukes Albert and Isabella--for there could be no doubt that Conde
had escaped to their territory--and by the King of Spain, in complicity
with whom the step had unquestionably been taken--was of gravest
political importance.
Henry had heard the intelligence but an hour before. He was at cards in
his cabinet with Bassompierre and others when d'Elbene entered and
made a private communication to him. "Bassompierre, my friend,"
whispered the King immediately in that courtier's ear, "I am lost. This
man has carried his wife off into