He had bragged of his connection with Spain and of his deep designs, and had shown to all the world that he was thenceforth but an instrument in the hands of the Spanish cabinet, while all the world knew the single reason for which he had fled.
The King, hopeless now of compelling the return of Conde, had become most anxious to separate him from his wife.

Already the subject of divorce between the two had been broached, and it being obvious that the Prince would immediately betake himself into the Spanish dominions, the King was determined that the Princess should not follow him thither.
He had the incredible effrontery and folly to request the Queen to address a letter to her at Brussels, urging her to return to France.

But Mary de' Medici assured her husband that she had no intention of becoming his assistant, using, to express her thought, the plainest and most vigorous word that the Italian language could supply.

Henry had then recourse once more to the father and aunt.
That venerable couple being about to wait upon the Archduke's envoy, in compliance with the royal request, Pecquius, out of respect to their advanced age, went to the Constable's residence.

Here both the Duchess and Constable, with tears in their eyes, besought that diplomatist to do his utmost to prevent the Princess from the sad fate of any longer sharing her husband's fortunes.
The father protested that he would never have consented to her marriage, preferring infinitely that she should have espoused any honest gentleman with 2000 crowns a year than this first prince of the blood, with a character such as it had proved to be; but that he had not dared to disobey the King.
He spoke of the indignities and cruelties to which she was subjected, said that Rochefort, whom Conde had employed to assist him in their flight from France, and on the crupper of whose horse the Princess had performed the journey, was constantly guilty of acts of rudeness and incivility towards her; that but a few days past he had fired off pistols in her apartment where she was sitting alone with the Princess of Orange, exclaiming that this was the way he would treat anyone who interfered with the commands of his master, Conde; that the Prince was incessantly railing at her for refusing to caress the Marquis of Spinola; and that, in short, he would rather she were safe in the palace of the Archduchess Isabella, even in the humblest position among her gentlewomen, than to know her vagabondizing miserably about the world with her husband.
This, he said, was the greatest fear he had, and he would rather see her dead than condemned to such a fate.
He trusted that the Archdukes were incapable of believing the stories that he and the Duchess of Angouleme were influenced in the appeals they made for the separation of the Prince and Princess by a desire to serve the purposes of the King.