position, he would, perhaps, have weaned him from his plot, and would
have won back to himself and to France that brave and powerful servant.
But Francis wavered between distrust and hope; he confined himself to
promising the constable restitution of his possessions if the decree of
Parliament was unfavorable to him; he demanded of him a written
engagement to remain always faithful to him and to join him in Italy as
soon as his illness would allow him; and, on taking leave of him, left
with him one of his own gentlemen, Peter de Brentonniere, Lord of Warthy,
with orders to report to the king as to his health. In this officer
Bourbon saw nothing more or less than a spy, and in the king's promises
nothing but vain words dependent as they were upon the issue of a lawsuit
which still remained an incubus upon him. He had no answer for words but
words; he undertook the engagements demanded of him by the king without
considering them binding; and he remained ill at Moulins, waiting till
events should summon him to take action with his foreign allies.

This state of things lasted far nearly three weeks. The king remained
stationary at Lyons waiting for the constable to join him; and the
constable, saying he was ready to set out and going so far as to actually
begin his march, was doing his three leagues a day by litter, being
always worse one day than he was the day before. Peter de Warthy, the
officer whom the king had left with him, kept going and coming from Lyons
to Moulins and from Moulins to Lyons, conveying to the constable the
king's complaints and to the king the constable's excuses, without
bringing the constable to decide upon joining the king at Lyons and
accompanying him into Italy, or the king upon setting out for Italy
without the constable. "I would give a hundred thousand crowns," the
king sent word to Bourbon, "to be in Lombardy." "The king will do well,"
answered Bourbon, "to get there as soon as possible, for despatch is
needful beyond everything." When Warthy insisted strongly, the constable
had him called up to his bedside; and "I feel myself," said he, "the
most unlucky man in the world not to be able to serve the king; but if I
were to be obstinate, the doctors who are attending me would not answer
for my life, and I am even worse than the doctors think. I shall never
be in a condition to do the king service any more. I am going back to my
native air, and, if I recover a day's health, I will go t