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.