er retreat of Montargis on the Loing. The scene
which she beheld awakened in her breast regret and indignation which she
was not slow in expressing. To the Duke of Guise, who had married her
daughter, Anne d'Este, she administered a severe rebuke. "Had I been
present," she said, "I would have prevented this ill-advised step. It is
no trifling matter to treat a prince of the blood in such a manner. The
wound is one that will long bleed; for no man has ever yet attacked the
blood of France but he has had reason to regret it."[943]

[Sidenote: Conde's courage.]

[Sidenote: His wife repulsed.]

The courage of the imprisoned prince rose with his misfortunes. The
house in which he was incarcerated was flanked by a tower whose
embrasures commanded the approach, the windows were newly barred, and
the door was half-walled up to preclude the possibility of escape.[944]
But Prince Louis stoutly maintained that it was not _he_ that was a
captive, since, though his body was confined, his spirit was free and
his conscience clean and guiltless; but rather _they_ were prisoners,
who, with the freedom of their body, felt their conscience to be
enslaved and harassed by a ceaseless recollection of their crimes.[945]
His wife, the virtuous Eleonore de Roye, fruitlessly applied for
admission in order to minister to his wants. She was rudely repulsed by
the king, at whose feet she had thrown herself in a flood of tears, with
the bitter remark that her husband was his mortal enemy, who had
conspired not only to obtain his crown, but his life also, and that he
could do no less than avenge himself upon him.[946] It was only by
special effort that the few who dared avow themselves friends of the
disgraced Bourbons, succeeded in obtaining for Conde legal counsel, and
that these were allowed to hold brief interviews with the prince in the
presence of two officers of the crown.[947] No others were admitted,
save a pretended friend, to sound his disposition toward the Guises.
Comprehending the motive of his visit, Conde begged him to inform those
who had sent him, "that he had received so many outrages at their hands
that there remained no path of reconciliation, save at the point of the
sword; and that, although he seemed to be at their mercy, he still had
confidence that God would avenge the injury done by them to a prince who
had come at the command and relying on the word of his king, but had
been shamefully imprisoned at their suggestion, in