Next day the Princess removed her residence to the palace of the Archdukes, where she was treated with distinguished honour by Isabella, and installed ceremoniously in the most stately, the most virtuous, and the most dismal of courts.  Her father and aunt professed themselves as highly pleased with the result, and Pecquius wrote that “they were glad to know her safe from the importunities of the old fop who seemed as mad as if he had been stung by a tarantula.”

And how had the plot been revealed?  Simply through the incorrigible garrulity of the King himself.  Apprised of the arrangement in all its details by the Constable, who had first received the special couriers of de Coeuvres, he could not keep the secret to himself for a moment, and the person of all others in the world to whom he thought good to confide it was the Queen herself.  She received the information with a smile, but straightway sent for the Nuncius Ubaldini, who at her desire instantly despatched a special courier to Spinola with full particulars of the time and mode of the proposed abduction.

Nevertheless the ingenuous Henry, confiding in the capacity of his deeply offended queen to keep the secret which he had himself divulged, could scarcely contain himself for joy.

Off he went to Saint-Germain with a train of coaches, impatient to get the first news from de Coeuvres after the scheme should have been carried into effect, and intending to travel post towards Flanders to meet and welcome the Princess.

“Pleasant farce for Shrove Tuesday,” wrote the secretary of Pecquius, “is that which the Frenchmen have been arranging down there!  He in whose favour the abduction is to be made was seen going out the same day spangled and smart, contrary to his usual fashion, making a gambado towards Saint-Germain-en-Laye with four carriages and four to meet the nymph.”

Great was the King’s wrath and mortification at this ridiculous exposure of his detestable scheme.  Vociferous were Villeroy’s expressions of Henry’s indignation at being supposed to have had any knowledge of or complicity in the affair.  “His Majesty cannot approve of the means one has taken to guard against a pretended plot for carrying off the Princess,” said the Secretary of State; “a fear which was simulated by the Prince in order to defame the King.”  He added that there was no reason to suspect the King, as he had never attempted anything of the sort in his life, and that the Archduke might have removed the Princess to his palace without sending an army to the hotel of the Prince of Orange, and causing such an alarm in the city, firing artillery on the rampart as if the town had been full of Frenchmen in arms, whereas one was ashamed next morning to find that there had been but fifteen in all.  “But it was all Marquis Spinola’s fault,” he said, “who wished to show himself off as a warrior.”