The King was the more exasperated by the resistance of the Archduke, as he had reason to believe that his ridiculous passion was returned. The princess, this child of sixteen, who had no affection for her husband and resented the inconvenience to which he had subjected her in order to save her honour, weary of her exile, far from her relatives and the Court of France, did not refuse the letters and presents of the King. Her entourage and Madame de Berny, the wife of the French Ambassador at Brussels, chanted continually the praises of her crowned adorer. She received verses in which Malherbe depicted in touching terms the grief of the great Alcandre. But Henri IV himself, in a letter to one of his agents, is not less pathetic:-- “I am writing to my beautiful angel: I am so worn out by these pangs that I am nothing but skin and bone. Everything disgusts me. I avoid company, and if, to observe the usage of society, I allow myself to be drawn into some assemblies, my wretchedness is complete.” The princess, in her turn, appealed to “his heart,” and besought him, as “her knight,” to effect her deliverance. For his “pangs” Henri IV regarded the Archduke and the Spaniards as responsible. Already on December 9, 1609, he had caused the Pope to be informed that “if the Spaniards contemplated employing the person of _Monsieur le Prince_ to stir up trouble in his realm, he had the means and the courage to resent it, and to avenge the injuries and the offences which they might be able to do him.” The conduct of the Archduke was irreproachable; he had merely safeguarded his own dignity, and it was certainly not his fault that Condé was not reconciled to the King. But Philip III and his Government, although they had neither foreseen nor aided the prince’s flight, were now asking themselves what advantage they might derive from it. In the event of war with France, the first Prince of the Blood would be a valuable ally, and it is not improbable that a most imprudent manifesto which Condé issued at Milan, wherein, after detailing his grievances against Henri IV, he claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne of France, on the ground that the King’s first marriage had not been truly annulled, was inspired by Spain, with the idea of still further widening the breach between him and his sovereign. Henri IV and his Ministers, finding persuasion of no avail with the Court of Brussels, had recourse to threats, representing that, unless the fair Charlotte were surrendered, war would follow. “Peace and war depend on whether the princess is or is not given up,” said Jeannin to Pecquius, the Archduke’s Ambassador in Paris; and the King himself reminded him that Troy fell because Priam would not surrender Helen.