pture.

Fearful of incurring through the means of the Count the additional
enmity of M. de Conde, Concini endeavoured to win over the Marquis de
Coeuvres, and to effect through his interposition a reconciliation with
the indignant Prince. To this solicitation M. de Coeuvres replied that
in order to establish a good understanding between two persons whom he
had already so strenuously sought to serve, he was willing and ready to
forget his private wrongs; but when it was suggested to him that he
should exert his influence to renew the proposed marriage without
reference to the Queen-Regent, he declined to make any effort to induce
M. de Soissons to adopt so onerous a course, alleging that he had
already suffered sufficiently by his interference in a matter which had
been productive of great annoyance and injury to the Prince, and that he
would not again lend his assistance to the project until the Marquis
d'Ancre and his wife pledged themselves to reconcile M. de Soissons with
the ministers, to restore him to the favour of the Regent, and to obtain
her sanction to the proposed alliance.

The firmness of this refusal staggered Concini, who, only recently
reinstated in the good graces of the Queen, was for once apprehensive
of the failure of his influence. He consequently confined his reply to a
simple acknowledgment of the courtesy with which his proposal had been
met by the Marquis, and then endeavoured personally to regain the
confidence of the Prince by assurances of the sincere inclination of the
Queen to meet his wishes upon every point within her power. As a natural
consequence M. de Soissons listened willingly to these flattering
declarations, uttered as they were by an individual well known to be in
the entire confidence of his royal mistress; but they soon became
blended with the regrets of the Marquis that his listener should have
formed so close an alliance with his nephew as to have drawn down upon
him the suspicion of the Court; and plausibly as these regrets were
expressed, M. de Soissons was soon enabled to discover that the wily
Italian had been instructed to detach him from Conde.

A similar endeavour was made with the Prince de Conde, but both were
ineffectual. The two royal kinsmen had become fully aware that mutual
support was their only safeguard against the party opposed to them; and
they had no sooner detected the symptoms of coldness which supervened
upon the ill-success of their advisers, than th