The King, having thus through the mouth of his secretary of state warmly protested against his supposed implication in the attempted abduction, began as furiously to rail at de Coeuvres for its failure; telling the Duc de Vendome that his uncle was an idiot, and writing that unlucky envoy most abusive letters for blundering in the scheme which had been so well concerted between them.  Then he sent for Malherbe, who straightway perpetrated more poems to express the King’s despair, in which Henry was made to liken himself to a skeleton with a dried skin, and likewise to a violet turned up by the ploughshare and left to wither.

He kept up through Madame de Berny a correspondence with “his beautiful angel,” as he called the Princess, whom he chose to consider a prisoner and a victim; while she, wearied to death with the frigid monotony and sepulchral gaieties of the archiducal court, which she openly called her “dungeon” diverted herself with the freaks and fantasies of her royal adorer, called him in very ill-spelled letters “her chevalier, her heart, her all the world,” and frequently wrote to beg him, at the suggestion of the intriguing Chateau Vert, to devise some means of rescuing her from prison.

The Constable and Duchess meanwhile affected to be sufficiently satisfied with the state of things.  Conde, however, received a letter from the King, formally summoning him to return to France, and, in case of refusal, declaring him guilty of high-treason for leaving the kingdom without the leave and against the express commands of the King.  To this letter, brought to him by de Coeuvres, the Prince replied by a paper, drawn up and served by a notary of Brussels, to the effect that he had left France to save his life and honour; that he was ready to return when guarantees were given him for the security of both.  He would live and die, he said, faithful to the King.  But when the King, departing from the paths of justice, proceeded through those of violence against him, he maintained that every such act against his person was null and invalid.  Henry had even the incredible meanness and folly to request the Queen to write to the Archdukes, begging that the Princess might be restored to assist at her coronation.  Mary de’ Medici vigorously replied once more that, although obliged to wink at the King’s amours, she declined to be his procuress.  Conde then went off to Milan very soon after the scene at the Nassau Palace and the removal of the Princess to the care of the Archdukes.  He was very angry with his wife, from whom he expressed a determination to be divorced, and furious with the King, the validity of whose second marriage and the legitimacy of whose children he proposed with Spanish help to dispute.

The Constable was in favour of the divorce, or pretended to be so, and caused importunate letters to be written, which he signed, to both Albert and Isabella, begging that his daughter might be restored to him to be the staff of his old age, and likewise to be present at the Queen’s coronation.  The Archdukes, however, resolutely refused to permit her to leave their protection without Conde’s consent, or until after a divorce had been effected, notwithstanding that the father and aunt demanded it.  The Constable and Duchess however, acquiesced in the decision, and expressed immense gratitude to Isabella.