s, who had never been upon a field of battle.
This condition, onerous as it appears, was accepted; and the father of
the lady finally, but with evident reluctance, restored the pernicious
document to the King in the presence of the Comte de Soissons and the
Duc de Montpensier, MM. de Bellievre, de Sillery, de Maisse,[247] de
Jeannin, de Gevres,[248] and de Villeroy, by whom it was verified, and
who signed a declaration to this effect,[249] although it was afterwards
proved[250] that D'Entragues had only delivered into the hands of Henry
a well-executed copy of the paper, while he himself retained
the original.

This ceremony over, the Marquise was commanded to leave the Court, and
for a short time peace was perfectly restored. The King had already
become weary of his new conquest, and the hand of Mademoiselle de la
Bourdaisiere was bestowed upon a needy and complaisant courtier; but
still the absence of the brilliant favourite, despite all her insolence,
left a void in the existence of Henry which no legitimate affection
sufficed to fill, and it was consequently not long ere he became
enamoured of Mademoiselle de Bueil,[251] a young beauty who had recently
appeared at Court in the suite of the Princesse de Conde. The
extraordinary loveliness of the youthful orphan at once riveted the
attention of the King, and her own inexperience made her, in so
licentious a Court as that of Henri IV, an easy victim, so easy, indeed,
that the libertine monarch did not even affect towards her the same
consideration which he had shown to his former favourites, although her
extraordinary personal perfections sufficed to render her society at
this period indispensable to him.

It was not long ere the exiled favourite was apprised of this new
infidelity, yet such was her reliance upon her own power over the
passions of the King that she affected to treat it with contempt; but
although she scorned to admit that she could feel any dread of being
supplanted by a rival, after-events tended to prove that she was by no
means so indifferent to the circumstance as she endeavoured to appear,
and being as vindictive in her hate as she was unmeasured in her
ambition, she could not forgive the double insult which had been offered
to her pride. Forgetting the excesses of which she had been guilty, and
the forbearance of the King, not only towards her faults, but even
towards her vices, she determined on revenge, and unhappily she felt
that the means w