is point they are firm. Thus then, since there is no
other hope, and that they insist upon this empty form, why should you
not indulge their whim, when it cannot involve the slightest
consequence? If you love as I do, can you hesitate to comply with their
desire? Name what conditions you please on your side, and I am ready to
accept them--too happy to obey your slightest wish."

Suffice it that the modern Delilah triumphed, and that the King was
induced to promise the required document;[72] a weakness rendered the
less excusable, if indeed, as Sully broadly asserts: "Henry was not so
blind but that he saw clearly how this woman sought to deceive him. I
say nothing of the reasons which he also had to believe her to be
anything rather than a vestal; nor of the state intrigues of which her
father, her mother, her brother, and herself had been convicted, and
which had drawn down upon all the family an order to leave Paris, which
I had quite recently signified to them in the name of his Majesty." [73]

As it is difficult to decide which of the two the Duke sought in his
_Memoirs_ to praise the most unsparingly, the sovereign or himself, the
epithet of "this weak Prince," which he applies to Henry on the present
occasion, proves the full force of his annoyance. He, moreover, gives a
very detailed account of an interview which took place between them upon
the subject of the document in question; even declaring that he tore it
up when his royal master placed it in his hands; and upon being asked by
the King if he were mad, had replied by saying: "Would to God that I
were the only madman in France!" [74] As, however, I do not find the
same anecdote recorded elsewhere by any contemporaneous authority, I
will not delay the narrative by inserting it at length; and the rather
as, although from the influence subsequently exercised over the fortunes
of Marie de Medicis by the frail favourite I have already been compelled
to dwell thus long upon her history, it is one which I am naturally
anxious to abridge as much as possible. I shall therefore only add that
the same biographer goes on to state that the contract which he had
destroyed was rewritten by the King himself, who within an hour
afterwards was on horseback and on his way to Malesherbes, where he
sojourned two days. It is, of course, impossible to decide whether Henry
had ever seriously contemplated the fulfilment of so degrading an
engagement; but it is certain that only a fe