did you not say yourself that I might be assured that there would be no
difficulty about it if the Prince remained obstinate."

Pecquius replied that he had made such a proposition to his masters by
his Majesty's request; but there had been no answer received, nor time
for one, as the hope of reconciliation had not yet been renounced. He
begged Henry to consider whether, without instructions from his master,
he could have thus engaged his word.

"Well," said the King, "since you disavow it, I see very well that the
Archduke has no wish to give me pleasure, and that these are nothing but
tricks that you have been amusing me with all this time. Very good; each
of us will know what we have to do."

Pecquius considered that the King had tried to get him into a net, and to
entrap him into the avowal of a promise which he had never made. Henry
remained obstinate in his assertions, notwithstanding all the envoy's
protestations.

"A fine trick, indeed, and unworthy of a king, 'Si dicere fas est,'" he
wrote to Secretary of State Praets. "But the force of truth is such that
he who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself."

Henry concluded the subject of Conde at this interview by saying that he
could have his pardon on the conditions already named, and not otherwise.

He also made some complaints about Archduke Leopold, who, he said,
notwithstanding his demonstrations of wishing a treaty of compromise,
was taking towns by surprise which he could not hold, and was getting his
troops massacred on credit.