The firmness of this refusal staggered Concini, who, only recently reinstated in the good graces of the Queen, was for once apprehensive of the failure of his influence.  He consequently confined his reply to a simple acknowledgment of the courtesy with which his proposal had been met by the Marquis, and then endeavoured personally to regain the confidence of the Prince by assurances of the sincere inclination of the Queen to meet his wishes upon every point within her power.  As a natural consequence M. de Soissons listened willingly to these flattering declarations, uttered as they were by an individual well known to be in the entire confidence of his royal mistress; but they soon became blended with the regrets of the Marquis that his listener should have formed so close an alliance with his nephew as to have drawn down upon him the suspicion of the Court; and plausibly as these regrets were expressed, M. de Soissons was soon enabled to discover that the wily Italian had been instructed to detach him from Conde.

A similar endeavour was made with the Prince de Conde, but both were ineffectual.  The two royal kinsmen had become fully aware that mutual support was their only safeguard against the party opposed to them; and they had no sooner detected the symptoms of coldness which supervened upon the ill-success of their advisers, than they resolved once more to leave the Court; and accordingly having taken leave of their Majesties, and resisted the pressing solicitations poured forth on all sides, they again retired; the Prince to St. Valery, and the Count to Dreux.  This renewed opposition to her wishes roused the spirit of the Regent.  She saw, as she asserted, that there no longer remained a hope of restraining the haughtiness, or of satisfying the pretensions, of the great vassals of the Crown; and she accordingly declared that in order to maintain her authority, and to secure the throne of her son, she would not allow the absence of the two Princes of the Blood to delay the publication of the King’s marriage.  Immediate measures were consequently taken for concluding the necessary arrangements; and this was done with the less hesitation that the Marechal de Lesdiguieres (who for some time after his arrival at Court had continued to anticipate that the pledge given to him by the ministers would shortly be redeemed) had induced both the one and the other to state that they would offer no opposition to the alliance which had been determined.[134]

But this concession, which they were destined subsequently to deplore, was all that could be extorted from the Princes, who considered themselves aggrieved by the fact that so important a negotiation should have been carried on without their participation, when special couriers had been despatched to acquaint both the Cardinal de Joyeuse and the Due d’Epernon with the pending treaty.  The Comte de Soissons, moreover, complained loudly and bitterly of the undue power of the ministers, and especially inveighed against the