It was a wise decision, since there were embarrassments enough within half-a-mile of the Louvre. The Princes of the Blood had returned; Soissons, three days after the death of Henri IV; Condé, in the middle of July. The former complained that the regency had been settled in his absence, and demanded the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. To appease him, Marie de’ Medici gave him the post of governor of Normandy and a _gratification_ of 200,000 crowns. Condé, to the Regent’s great relief, was apparently well-disposed towards the new government, and, to confirm him in his peaceable intentions, she purchased for 400,000 crowns the Hôtel de Gondi, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and presented it to him, together with furniture to the value of 40,000 crowns; confirmed him in all his offices and appointments; increased his pension to 200,000 crowns, and gave him a large sum to pay his debts. The Regent hoped, by setting a price upon them, to keep within bounds all the ambitions of the grandees; it was her system of government. She paid Guise’s debts, and authorised him to marry the immensely wealthy widow of the Duc de Montpensier, a union to which, for political reasons, Henri IV would never have consented; she promised to pay the debts of the Duc de Nevers; she accorded to all the governors the right of appointing their successors. “The grandees did not weary of receiving, and said to one another: ‘The time of kings has passed, and that of great nobles and princes has come; we must take every advantage of it.’” Their arrogance and ostentation knew no bounds. They seldom left their houses unless accompanied by numerous and brilliant escorts. Fifteen hundred cavaliers went to meet Condé on the day of his arrival in Paris; the Duc de Guise had a suite of five or six hundred horse. The young King remained almost alone in the Louvre, and Marie de’ Medici was obliged to reconstitute the two hundred gentlemen halberdiers, disbanded by Henri IV, from motives of economy. Happily for the Crown, the grandees were divided, and such parties as did exist were merely associations of a few covetous nobles, animated by no common motive except that of filling their pockets. The Guises, flattered and lavishly paid, boasted of their loyalty to the Regent. Bouillon was at enmity with Sully, like himself a chief of the Protestants. The Prince de Conti had for some years been on bad terms with his brother, the Comte de Soissons, and at the beginning of 1611 their antipathy to one another found vent in a violent quarrel, in which Guise, whose sister, it will be remembered, Conti had married, found himself involved, and which threatened for a moment to develop into a sort of civil war.