Henry M. Baird · 282 of 379

CHAPTER XI · Condé cleared and reconciled to Guise.

At no time since the death of the late king had the reversal of the sentence against Condé been doubtful. The time had now arrived for his complete restoration to favor. The first step was taken in the privy council, where, on the thirteenth of March, the chancellor declared that he knew of no informations made against him. Whereupon the prince was proclaimed, by the unanimous voice of the council, sufficiently cleared of all the charges raised by his enemies. The Bourbon, who had refused, until his honor should be fully satisfied, to enjoy the liberty which he might easily have obtained, had been invited by Charles to the court, which was sojourning at Fontainebleau, and now resumed his seat in the council. Just three months later (on Friday, the thirteenth of June) the Parliament of Paris, after a prolonged examination, in which all the forms of law were observed with punctilious exactness, gave its solemn attestation of the innocence of Louis of Condé, of Madame de Roye, his mother-in-law, and of the others who had so narrowly escaped being plunged with him in a common destruction. Such declarations might be supposed to savor indifferently well of hypocrisy. They were, however, outdone in the final scene of this pompous farce, enacted about two months later in one of the halls of the castle of St. Germain. On the twenty-fourth of August a stately assembly gathered in the king's presence. Catharine, the princes of the blood, five cardinals, and a goodly number of dukes and counts, were present; for Louis of Bourbon-Vendôme, Prince of Condé, and Francis of Guise were to be publicly reconciled to each other. Charles first announced the object for which he had summoned this assemblage, and called upon the Duke of Guise to express his sentiments. "Sir," said the latter, addressing Condé, "I neither have, nor would I desire to have, advanced anything against your honor; nor have I been the author or the instigator of your imprisonment!" To which Condé replied: "Sir, I hold to be bad and miserable him or those who have been its causes." Nothing abashed, Guise made the rejoinder: "I believe that it is so; that concerns me in no respect." After this gratifying exhibition of convenient memory, if not of Christian forgiveness, the prince and duke, at the king's request, embraced each other; and the auditory, highly edified, broke up. It was fitting that this hollow reconciliation should take place on the very day upon which, eleven years later, a more treacherous compact was to bear fruit fatal to thousands.