er of the Queen, where her Majesty was still unable to leave her
bed, and there he gave full scope to the anguish under which he was
labouring. "Never," says Bassompierre, "did I see a man so lost or so
overcome." In the room were also assembled the Marquis de Coeuvres,[409]
the Comte de Cramail, and MM. d'Elbene and de Lomenie, with whom he
unscrupulously discussed, in the presence of his outraged wife, the
readiest means of compelling the immediate return of the fugitives. As
may naturally be anticipated, the advice likely to prove the most
flattering to his wishes was offered on all sides, and a thousand
expedients were suggested and discussed only to be found unfeasible,
until the King, in despair, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour,
resolved upon summoning his ministers. Accordingly MM. de Sillery, de
Villeroy, de Jeannin, and de Sully soon joined the party, which had,
moreover, been augmented by the presence of several of the most
confidential friends of the monarch, among others by De Gevres,[410] De
la Force,[411] and La Varenne; and once more the King sought a solution
of the difficulty. Here, however, the judgment and policy of the several
councillors differed upon every point. The Chancellor gave it as his
opinion that a strong declaration should be made against the step taken
by the Prince himself, and another equally stringent against those by
whom he should be aided and abetted in his evasion; M. de Villeroy
advised that despatches should forthwith be forwarded to the several
ambassadors of the French King at foreign Courts to warn the sovereigns
of those states against receiving the fugitive Prince within their
territories, and to exhort them to take measures for enforcing his
return to France; M. de Jeannin declared that the most expeditious
method of compelling obedience, and forestalling the inconvenience and
scandal of the self-expatriation of the first Prince of the Blood, would
be to cause him to be immediately followed by a captain of the
bodyguard, instructed to expostulate with him on his disloyalty and
imprudence, and to threaten instant war against any state by whom he
should be harboured; while when Sully at length spoke it was only to
deprecate each and all of these measures, by which he insisted that the
monarch would give an importance to the departure of the Prince that his
enemies would but too gladly turn to their own account; whereas, if he
made no comment upon the flight of M. de C