The peace being thus concluded and ratified on both sides, the Queen my mother prepared to return.  At this instant I received letters from the King my husband, in which he expressed a great desire to see me, begging me, as soon as peace was agreed on, to ask leave to go to him.  I communicated my husband’s wish, to the Queen my mother, and added my own entreaties.  She expressed herself greatly averse to such a measure, and used every argument to set me against it.  She observed that, when I refused her proposal of a divorce after St. Bartholomew’s Day, she gave way to my refusal, and commended me for it, because my husband was then converted to the Catholic religion; but now that he had abjured Catholicism, and was turned Huguenot again, she could not give her consent that I should go to him.  When I still insisted upon going, she burst into a flood of tears, and said, if I did not return with her, it would prove her ruin; that the King would believe it was her doing; that she had promised to bring me back with her; and that, when my brother returned to Court, which would be soon, she would give her consent.

We now returned to Paris, and found the King well satisfied that we had made a peace; though not, however, pleased with the articles concluded in favour of the Huguenots.  He therefore resolved within himself, as soon as my brother should return to Court, to find some pretext for renewing the war.  These advantageous conditions were, indeed, only granted the Huguenots to get my brother out of their hands, who was detained near two months, being employed in disbanding his German horse and the rest of his army.

LETTER XIII

At length my brother returned to Court, accompanied by all the Catholic nobility who had followed his fortunes.  The King received him very graciously, and showed, by his reception of him, how much he was pleased at his return.  Bussi, who returned with my brother, met likewise with a gracious reception.  Le Guast was now no more, having died under the operation of a particular regimen ordered for him by his physician.  He had given himself up to every kind of debauchery; and his death seemed the judgment of the Almighty on one whose body had long been perishing, and whose soul had been made over to the prince of demons as the price of assistance through the means of diabolical magic, which he constantly practised.  The King, though now without this instrument of his malicious contrivances, turned his thoughts entirely upon the destruction of the Huguenots.  To effect this, he strove to engage my brother against them, and thereby make them his enemies; and that I might be considered as another enemy, he used every means to prevent me from going to the King my husband.  Accordingly he showed every mark of attention to both of us, and manifested an inclination to gratify all our wishes.