assigned to him in the comedy thus skilfully arranged by his cousin king,
never much enamoured of his bride, while highly appreciating the 100,000
livres of pension, he remonstrated violently with his wife, bitterly
reproached the King, and made himself generally offensive. "The Prince is
here," wrote Henry to Sully, "and is playing the very devil. You would be
in a rage and be ashamed of the things he says of me. But at last I am
losing patience, and am resolved to give him a bit of my mind." He wrote
in the same terms to Montmorency. The Constable, whose conduct throughout
the affair was odious and pitiable, promised to do his best to induce the
Prince, instead of playing the devil, to listen to reason, as he and the
Duchess of Angouleme understood reason.

Henry had even the ineffable folly to appeal to the Queen to use her
influence with the refractory Conde. Mary de' Medici replied that there
were already thirty go-betweens at work, and she had no idea of being the
thirty-first--[Henrard, 30].

Conde, surrounded by a conspiracy against his honour and happiness,
suddenly carried off his wife to the country, much to the amazement and
rage of Henry.

In the autumn he entertained a hunting party at a seat of his, the Abbey
of Verneuille, on the borders of Picardy. De Traigny, governor of Amiens,
invited the Prince, Princess, and the Dowager-Princess to a banquet at
his chateau not far from the Abbey. On their road thither they passed a
group of huntsmen and grooms in the royal livery. Among them was an aged
lackey with a plaister over one eye, holding a couple of hounds in leash.
The Princess recognized at a glance under that ridiculous disguise the
King.