the proper means of reviving the suppressed
process against the Dowager and of publicly degrading Conde from his
position of first prince of the blood which he had been permitted to
usurp. He likewise procured a decree accusing him of high-treason and
ordering him to be punished at his Majesty's pleasure, to be prepared by
the Parliament of Paris; going down to the court himself in his
impatience and seating himself in everyday costume on the bench of judges
to see that it was immediately proclaimed.

Instead of at once attacking the Archdukes in force as he intended
in the first ebullition of his wrath, he resolved to send
de Boutteville-Montmorency, a relative of the Constable, on special and
urgent mission to Brussels. He was to propose that Conde and his wife
should return with the Prince and Princess of Orange to Breda, the King
pledging himself that for three or four months nothing should be
undertaken against him. Here was a sudden change of determination fit to
surprise the States-General, but the King's resolution veered and whirled
about hourly in the tempests of his wrath and love.

That excellent old couple, the Constable and the Duchess of Angouleme,
did their best to assist their sovereign in his fierce attempts to get
their daughter and niece into his power.

The Constable procured a piteous letter to be written to Archduke Albert,
signed "Montmorency his mark," imploring him not to "suffer that his
daughter, since the Prince refused to return to France, should leave
Brussels to be a wanderer about the world following a young prince who
had no fixed purpose in his mind."

Archduke Albert, through his ambassador in Paris, Peter Pecquius,
suggested the possibility of a reconciliation between Henry and his
kinsman, and offered himself as intermediary. He enquired whether the
King would find it agreeable that he should ask for pardon in name of the
Prince. Henry replied that he was willing that the Archduke should accord
to Conde secure residence for the time within his dominions on three
inexorable conditions:--firstly, that the Prince should ask for pardon
without any stipulations, the King refusing to listen to any treaty or to
assign him towns or places of security as had been vaguely suggested, and
holding it utterly unreasonable that a man sueing for pardon should,
instead of deserved punishment, talk of terms and acquisitions; secondly,
that, if Conde should reject the proposition, Albert should im