Pecquius, not yet despairing that his master would effect a reconciliation between the King and Conde, proposed again that the Prince should be permitted to reside for a time in some place not within the jurisdiction of Spain or of the Archdukes, being allowed meantime to draw his annual pension of 100,000 livres.  Henry ridiculed the idea of Conde’s drawing money from him while occupying his time abroad with intrigues against his throne and his children’s succession.  He scoffed at the Envoy’s pretences that Conde was not in receipt of money from Spain, as if a man so needy and in so embarrassing a position could live without money from some source; and as if he were not aware, from his correspondents in Spain, that funds were both promised and furnished to the Prince.

He repeated his determination not to accord him pardon unless he returned to France, which he had no cause to leave, and, turning suddenly on Pecquius, demanded why, the subject of reconciliation having failed, the Archduke did not immediately fulfil his promise of turning Conde out of his dominions.

Upon this Albert’s minister drew back with the air of one amazed, asking how and when the Archduke had ever made such a promise.

“To the Marquis de Coeuvres,” replied Henry.

Pecquius asked if his ears had not deceived him, and if the King had really said that de Coeuvres had made such a statement.

Henry repeated and confirmed the story.

Upon the Minister’s reply that he had himself received no such intelligence from the Archduke, the King suddenly changed his tone, and said,

“No, I was mistaken—­I was confused—­the Marquis never wrote me this; but did you not say yourself that I might be assured that there would be no difficulty about it if the Prince remained obstinate.”

Pecquius replied that he had made such a proposition to his masters by his Majesty’s request; but there had been no answer received, nor time for one, as the hope of reconciliation had not yet been renounced.  He begged Henry to consider whether, without instructions from his master, he could have thus engaged his word.

“Well,” said the King, “since you disavow it, I see very well that the Archduke has no wish to give me pleasure, and that these are nothing but tricks that you have been amusing me with all this time.  Very good; each of us will know what we have to do.”

Pecquius considered that the King had tried to get him into a net, and to entrap him into the avowal of a promise which he had never made.  Henry remained obstinate in his assertions, notwithstanding all the envoy’s protestations.

“A fine trick, indeed, and unworthy of a king, ‘Si dicere fas est,’” he wrote to Secretary of State Praets.  “But the force of truth is such that he who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself.”

Henry concluded the subject of Conde at this interview by saying that he could have his pardon on the conditions already named, and not otherwise.