Pity it is that this generous burst of high-mindedness and loyalty will not bear analysis.  Both the Princes had discovered that the professions to which they had so complacently listened, and which had induced their recent return to Court, had merely been intended to lure them thither at a period when their presence was more than ever essential to the interests of the Regency; and while M. de Conde found his position in the Government as undefined and unsatisfactory as ever, and that his vanity had been flattered at the expense of his interests, the Count on his side saw the possession of Quilleboeuf more remote than ever, and openly declared that they had both been duped.

This undisguised admission at once revealed the selfishness of the views with which the malcontent Princes had lent themselves to the wishes of Marie and her ministers; and assuredly no worse policy could have been adopted than that by which they were again induced to exile themselves from their proper sphere of action.  Too many interests were, however, served by their absence for either counsellor or courtier to point out to the Queen the extreme danger of driving them to extremities, save in the instance of the Connetable, who, more and more chagrined by the pitiful and even precarious position occupied by his son-in-law, remonstrated earnestly with the Regent upon the peril of the course which she had been induced to pursue.

“Remember, Madame,” he said, “that the civil wars and wretchedness of which this nation has been the prey during the last few reigns all owed their origin to the fatal advice given to Catherine de Medicis to disregard the legitimate claims of the Princes of the Blood; and those who would induce your Majesty to follow her example are more bent upon the furtherance of their own fortunes, and the increase of their own power, than anxious for the welfare of the state.  Should your Majesty, therefore, suffer yourself to be influenced by their counsels, I foresee nothing in the future but anarchy and confusion.”

Unfortunately, however, the close alliance of the veteran Duke with one of those very Princes whose cause he thus warmly advocated, and his enmity towards the Guises, deprived his remonstrances of the force which they might otherwise have possessed, and Marie de Medicis consequently disregarded the warning until after-events caused her to feel and acknowledge its value.  Supported by the House of Guise and the Duc d’Epernon, assured of the good faith of the Connetable and the Marechaux de Bouillon and de Lesdiguieres, as well as deeply incensed by the bearing of the two Princes in the Council; and, moreover, urged by her more immediate favourites to assert her dignity, and to display towards the malcontents a coldness and indifference as marked as that which they exhibited towards herself, she dismissed the subject from her thoughts as one of slight importance, and turned all her attention to the brilliant festivities by which the declaration of the royal marriages was to be celebrated.[140]