On the following day—April 26—Bassompierre reached Paris and lost no time in waiting upon Louis XIII, who received him very graciously and “commanded him to love M. de Luynes, who was a good servant.” He inquired if he might be permitted to pay his respects to the Queen-Mother, who since the 24th had been kept a close prisoner in her apartments. The King replied that he would consider the matter, which meant that the request did not meet with his approval. Bassompierre, however, was anxious not to appear to fail in respect to a princess who had been so good a friend to him, and whose disgrace, besides, might very well prove to be but a temporary one. And so, in default of being able to convey them himself, he sent his compliments to her Majesty every evening, through the medium of her dressmaker, the only person, with the exception of her servants, who was permitted to enter her apartments.

Meanwhile, negotiations were in progress for the Queen-Mother’s retirement from Paris and the Court, upon which Luynes had persuaded the King to insist. It was Richelieu who negotiated the conditions on Marie’s behalf. That astute personage, recognising that the victorious party was not inclined to pardon him, had attached himself to Marie de’ Medici, who had appointed him chief of her counsellors, hoping ere long to succeed in reconciling her with Luynes and Louis XIII, or with Louis XIII against Luynes, and, in either event, to recover the position he had lost. He obtained, after considerable difficulty, permission for her to reside no further off than Blois, for which she set out on May 3.

Bassompierre has left us an interesting account of the parting between Louis XIII and his mother, of which he was an eye-witness:

On May 5, the rebellious princes VendÔme, Mayenne and Bouillon, who, on learning of Concini’s death, had hastened to lay down their arms, open the gates of their fortresses and disband their soldiers, as though they had been fighting only against the favourite, came to Vincennes, accompanied by a number of their principal followers, to salute the King and assure him of their allegiance. Although Louis XIII must have known very well that no reliance whatever could be placed in their professions of loyalty, and that, unless he made it worth their while to keep the peace, they would rise again on the first plausible pretext, they were received as though they had taken up arms for, and not against, the royal authority. On May 12 a declaration of the King reinstated them in all their property, honours, and offices, and excused them having taken up arms, “although unlawfully,” on the ground that they had done so in order to defend themselves against the tyranny of the MarÉchal d’Ancre.

Logic would have demanded that the reconciliation should have gone further, and that CondÉ, whose arrest had been the pretext for the revolt, should have been released from the Bastille and reinstated as chief of the Council. Nothing of the kind happened, however. Louis XIII entertained a strong antipathy to his turbulent kinsman, which need occasion no surprise; Luynes feared that he might attempt to dispute his ascendancy over the young King; while the other princes, who were bound to their chief neither by affection nor even by party-loyalty, did not press for his liberation. And so he remained a prisoner.

The King stayed at Vincennes for some days and then returned to Paris; but, shortly afterwards, removed to Saint-Germain. After having been so long confined to the capital and a sedentary life, he was revelling in his new-found liberty, and the opportunity it afforded him of indulging in his favourite sports of hawking and hunting.

While the Court was at Saint-Germain, the Princess de CondÉ arrived there to ask the King’s permission to share her husband’s captivity. Although, for some time before CondÉ’s arrest, the relations between him and his wife had been very cool, the princess, on learning of the misfortune that had befallen him, had shown real magnanimity. Without a moment’s delay, she set out for Paris—she was at Valery at the time—sent the prince messages assuring him of her sympathy and devotion, and begged the Queen-Mother to allow her to join him. Her request, however, was refused, and she received orders to leave Paris at once and return to Valery.

Now, however, she did not plead in vain, and Louis XIII not only granted her request, but gave her permission to take with her “one demoiselle and her little dwarf, who had begged his Majesty to consent to his not abandoning his mistress.” The same day (May 26) the princess entered the Bastille, “where she was received by Monsieur le Prince with every demonstration of affection, nor did he leave her in repose until she had said that she forgave him.”[124]

In the following October, the authorities of the Bastille were discovered to be conniving at a secret correspondence which Barbin was carrying on with the Queen-Mother, and first Bournonville, the Lieutenant of the fortress, and brother of the Governor, the Baron de Persan, and subsequently Persan himself, were arrested.[125] Bassompierre was then sent with sixty Swiss to take charge of the Bastille, but he did not have the Prince and Princesse de CondÉ under his supervision, as, about a month previously, they had been transferred to the ChÂteau of Vincennes, where CondÉ was allowed a great deal more liberty than had been permitted him in Paris. Bassompierre only remained at the Bastille about ten days, at the end of which he received orders to hand over the command to the new favourite’s youngest brother, Brantes.

In December Bassompierre went to Normandy to attend the assembly of the Notables which Louis XIII was holding at Rouen. While he was there, news arrived that the Princesse de CondÉ had given birth to a still-born child and was in a critical condition; and the King being desirous of sending some important personages to make inquiries on her behalf, or, in the event of the princess being dead, to offer his condolences to CondÉ, Bassompierre and the Duc de Guise offered to go. They set out in a coach, a kind of conveyance which did not usually lend itself to rapid travelling; but, by arranging for an unusual number of relays, reached Paris the same day, and made the return journey with similar expedition. Bassompierre assures us that never before had a journey by coach been made in so short a time at that season of the year.

The princess recovered, “though she was more than forty-eight hours without movement or feeling,” and “never was a person in greater extremity without dying.”[126]