Little accustomed to indulge in a prodigality so reckless, Henry had flattered himself that the affair was concluded; but such was by no means the intention of the young lady and her family. Henriette, indeed, received her royal lover with the most exaggerated assurances of affection and gratitude; but she nevertheless persisted in declaring that she was so closely watched as to be no longer mistress of her own actions, and so intimidated by the threats of her father that she dared not act in opposition to his will. In vain did the King remonstrate, argue, and upbraid; the lady remained firm, affecting to bewail the state of coercion in which she was kept, and entreating Henry to exert his influence to overcome the repugnance of her family to their mutual happiness. To his anger she opposed her tears; to his resentment, her fascinations; and when at length she discovered that the royal patience was rapidly failing, although her power over his feelings remained unshaken, she ventured upon the last bold effort of her ambition, by protesting to the infatuated sovereign that her father had remained deaf to all her entreaties, and that the only concession which she could induce him to make was one which she had not courage to communicate to his Majesty. As she had, of course, anticipated, Henry at once desired her to inform him of the nature of the fresh demand which was to be made upon his tenderness; when, with well-acted reluctance, Mademoiselle d'Entragues repeated a conversation that she had held with the Marquis, at the close of which he had assured her that he would never consent to see her the mistress of the King until she had received a written promise of marriage under the royal hand, provided she became, within a year, the mother of a son.
"In vain, Sire," she pursued hurriedly, as she perceived a cloud gather upon the brow of the monarch--"in vain did I seek to overcome the scruples of my parents, and represent to them the utter inutility of such a document; they declared that they sought only to preserve the honour of their house. And you well know, Sire," she continued with an appealing smile, "that, as I ventured to remind them, your word is of equal value with your signature, as no mere subject could dare to summon a great king like yourself to perform any promise--you, who have fifty thousand men at your command to enforce your will! But all my reasoning was vain. Upon this point they are firm. Thus then, since there is no other hope, and that they insist upon this empty form, why should you not indulge their whim, when it cannot involve the slightest consequence? If you love as I do, can you hesitate to comply with their desire? Name what conditions you please on your side, and I am ready to accept them--too happy to obey your slightest wish."
Suffice it that the modern Delilah triumphed, and that the King was induced to promise the required document;[72] a weakness rendered the less excusable, if indeed, as Sully broadly asserts: "Henry was not so blind but that he saw clearly how this woman sought to deceive him. I say nothing of the reasons which he also had to believe her to be anything rather than a vestal; nor of the state intrigues of which her father, her mother, her brother, and herself had been convicted, and which had drawn down upon all the family an order to leave Paris, which I had quite recently signified to them in the name of his Majesty." [73]
As it is difficult to decide which of the two the Duke sought in his Memoirs to praise the most unsparingly, the sovereign or himself, the epithet of "this weak Prince," which he applies to Henry on the present occasion, proves the full force of his annoyance. He, moreover, gives a very detailed account of an interview which took place between them upon the subject of the document in question; even declaring that he tore it up when his royal master placed it in his hands; and upon being asked by the King if he were mad, had replied by saying: "Would to God that I were the only madman in France!" [74] As, however, I do not find the same anecdote recorded elsewhere by any contemporaneous authority, I will not delay the narrative by inserting it at length; and the rather as, although from the influence subsequently exercised over the fortunes of Marie de Medicis by the frail favourite I have already been compelled to dwell thus long upon her history, it is one which I am naturally anxious to abridge as much as possible. I shall therefore only add that the same biographer goes on to state that the contract which he had destroyed was rewritten by the King himself, who within an hour afterwards was on horseback and on his way to Malesherbes, where he sojourned two days. It is, of course, impossible to decide whether Henry had ever seriously contemplated the fulfilment of so degrading an engagement; but it is certain that only a few months subsequently he presented to Mademoiselle d'Entragues the estate of Verneuil, and that thenceforward she assumed the title of Marquise, coupled with the name of her new possession.[75]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, was the brother of Charles, Duc de Mayenne, and of Louis, Cardinal de Guise. He was the chief of the League, and excited a popular revolt on the day of the Barricades, in the hope of possessing himself of the crown. Henri III caused him to be assassinated at Blois, in the year 1588. He was distinguished as le Balafré by the people, in consequence of the deep scar of a wound across the face by which he was disfigured.
[3] Catherine was the second daughter of François de Clèves, Duc de Nevers, and of Marguerite de Bourbon-Vendôme, the aunt of Henri IV. Her dower consisted of the county of Eu, in Normandy. She was twice married; first to Antoine de Croi, Prince de Portien, by whom she had no issue; and secondly, to Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise. She died in 1633, at the age of eighty-five years.
[4] She heard three masses every day, one high and two low ones, and took the holy communion each week on the Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays.--Letters of Etienne Pasquier, book xxii. letter v. col. 666, of the folio edition.
[5] By some extraordinary presentiment they always imagined that they saw a King of France in the Prince of Navarre, even at a time when the greatest obstacles were opposed to such an idea.--Dreux du Radier, Mémoires des Reines et Régentes de France, vol. v. p. 130. See also Mémoires de Sully, vol. i. pp. 60–67.
[6] Dreux du Radier, vol. v. p. 182.
[7] Hist. des Reines et Régentes de France, vol. ii. p. 4.
[8] Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, first Prince of the Blood, and Grand Master of France, was born in 1552, and succeeded his father, the Comte Louis, who was killed at the battle of Jarnac, on the 13th of May 1569, in the command of the Protestant party, conjointly with the King of Navarre (Henri IV). He made a levy of foreign troops in 1575, distinguished himself at Coutras in 1587, and died by poison the following year at St. Jean d'Angély.
[9] Ambroise Paré was born at Laval (Mayenne), in 1509. He commenced his public career as surgeon of the infantry-general Réné de Montejean; and on his return to France, having taken his degrees at the College of St. Edmé, he was elected Provost of the Corporation of Surgeons. In 1552, Henri II gave him the appointment of body-surgeon to the King, a post which he continued to fill under Francis II, Charles IX, and Henri III. Charles IX, whose life he saved when he had nearly fallen a victim to the want of skill of his physician Portail, who, in opening a vein, had inflicted a deep and dangerous wound in his arm, repaid the benefit by concealing him in his own chamber during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Paré was a zealous Calvinist. He died in 1590. His published works consist of one folio volume, divided into twenty-eight books.
[10] Gillone Goyon, dite de Matignon, demoiselle de Torigni, was the daughter of Jacques de Matignon, Marshal of France, and of Françoise de Daillon, who was subsequently married to Pierre de Harcourt, Seigneur de Beuvron.
[11] Lévi Alvarès, Hist. Clas. des Reines et Régentes de France, p. 185.
[12] Dupleix, Hist. de Louis XIII, p. 53.
[13] Sully, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 45.
[14] Catherine de Bourbon, Princesse de Navarre, and sister of Henri IV, was born at Paris in 1558. After his accession to the throne of France, Henry gave her in marriage to Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Bar. She refused to change her religion, even when her brother had done so, and died, without issue, in 1604, at Nancy.
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