and should, besides, consider it as more secure when
obtained by such means.

The peace being thus concluded and ratified on both sides, the
Queen my mother prepared to return. At this instant I received
letters from the King my husband, in which he expressed a great
desire to see me, begging me, as soon as peace was agreed on, to
ask leave to go to him. I communicated my husband's wish, to the
Queen my mother, and added my own entreaties. She expressed herself
greatly averse to such a measure, and used every argument to set
me against it. She observed that, when I refused her proposal
of a divorce after St. Bartholomew's Day, she gave way to my
refusal, and commended me for it, because my husband was then
converted to the Catholic religion; but now that he had abjured
Catholicism, and was turned Huguenot again, she could not give
her consent that I should go to him. When I still insisted upon
going, she burst into a flood of tears, and said, if I did not
return with her, it would prove her ruin; that the King would
believe it was her doing; that she had promised to bring me back
with her; and that, when my brother returned to Court, which
would be soon, she would give her consent.

We now returned to Paris, and found the King well satisfied that
we had made a peace; though not, however, pleased with the articles
concluded in favour of the Huguenots. He therefore resolved within
himself, as soon as my brother should return to Court, to find
some pretext for renewing the war. These advantageous conditions
were, indeed, only granted the Huguenots to get my brother out
of their hands, who was detained near two months, being employed
in disbanding his German horse and the rest of his army.

LETTER XIII

At length my brother returned to Court, accompanied by all the
Catholic nobility who had followed his fortunes. The King received
him very graciously, and showed, by his reception of him, how
much he was pleased at his return. Bussi, who returned with my
brother, met likewise with a gracious reception. Le Guast was
now no more, having died under the operation of a particular
regimen ordered for him by his physician. He had given himself
up to every kind of debauchery; and his death seemed the judgment
of the Almighty on one whose body had long been perishing, and
whose soul had been made over to the prince of demons as the price
of assistance through the means of diabolical magic, which he
constantly practised.