r
evasion. She was to proceed at all speed to Pontarme, where a relay of
fresh horses and an armed escort were to await her arrival, and similar
arrangements were to be made throughout the whole of the route to
Rocroy. Finally, the precise night of her flight was decided on; and
this had no sooner been determined than M. de Coeuvres despatched a
courier to the Connetable, informing him that there now remained no
doubt of the immediate return of the Princess to his protection.

This intelligence reached Paris on the Wednesday, and the following
Saturday was the period fixed for the projected evasion, a fact which M.
de Montmorency had no sooner ascertained than he hastened to communicate
the success of M. de Coeuvres to the King. Henry was overjoyed, and in
the fulness of his satisfaction was guilty of an indiscretion which was
fated to overthrow his hopes; for, believing that in so short a time no
effectual measures could be taken to frustrate the plot, he was
incautious enough to confide the whole conspiracy to the Queen, who was
still an invalid, not having yet recovered from the birth of her third
daughter.[414] Agitated and alarmed, Marie listened to the narrative
with an earnest attention, which only tended to render her royal consort
more communicative than he might otherwise have been; and, in the excess
of his self-gratulation, he moreover exhibited such unequivocal proofs
of the interest which he personally felt in the result of the evasion,
that she at once resolved to prevent the reappearance of the Princess in
France. The King had accordingly no sooner quitted her apartment than
she desired Madame Concini to bring her kinsman the Nuncio Ubaldini to
her private closet without losing an instant, a command which was so
zealously obeyed by her favourite that she was enabled, after a
prolonged conference with this ecclesiastic, to despatch a courier
secretly to Spinola the same night to acquaint him with the projected
design, and to entreat him to frustrate it should there yet be time.

The royal messenger travelled so rapidly that he reached Brussels at
eleven o'clock on the morning of Saturday, and Spinola had no sooner
read the despatch than he hastened to communicate its contents to the
Archduke and the Infanta, who instantly sent a company of the light
horse of the bodyguard to possess themselves of all the approaches to
the palace of the Prince of Orange. This done, their Imperial Highnesses
next caused se