order to obtain possession of their money; while others had been
compelled to pay a heavy sum to save their dwellings and their property
from the brand of the incendiary.

These frightful revelations excited the horror and indignation of Marie
and her Council; and, in reply to their requisition, the complainants
were assured that, although the King and his Government had preferred to
pardon the injuries which they had personally sustained from the faction
of M. de Vendome, rather than visit them with the vengeance that they
had legally merited, neither the sovereign nor those who held office
under him could permit crimes like those detailed in their remonstrance
to be exercised with impunity upon the people, and those crimes would
consequently be punished with the most extreme rigour.

The first independent act of the Duc de Vendome had thus greatly injured
him in the estimation of the young monarch and his mother; nor did his
afterlife tend to give them cause to alter the opinion which they then
formed either as regarded his stability or his capacity. Even the
marriage which his father, Henri IV, had with so much difficulty
contracted for him with the heiress of the House of Mercoeur,[174]
failed to produce the result that had been anticipated, as he squandered
her wealth, without increasing his own political importance.[175]

On her triumphant return to the capital Marie de Medicis was apprised of
the death of the Prince de Conti, which had taken place on the 13th of
August; but the void was little felt, the infirmities under which he
laboured, and the weakness of his intellect, having, despite his exalted
rank, rendered him a mere cipher at the Court. By the nation his loss
was totally unfelt; while this indifference was shared by his wife,
whose violent passion for Bassompierre had long been notorious, and who
shortly afterwards privately gave him her hand. Mademoiselle
d'Entragues, the sister of the Marquise de Verneuil, to whom he had
previously been betrothed, and who had made him the father of a
son,[176] had in vain endeavoured in the law courts to compel him to
fulfil his contract, and persisted in bearing his name; a fact which was
so well known as to induce many persons to believe that she was in
reality his wife. On one occasion, when he was in attendance upon the
Queen, the royal carriage was detained for a moment by the crowd near
that of Mademoiselle d'Entragues, whom Marie immediately recognized.
"S