While the Court was at Saint-Germain, the Princess de Condé arrived there to ask the King’s permission to share her husband’s captivity. Although, for some time before Condé’s arrest, the relations between him and his wife had been very cool, the princess, on learning of the misfortune that had befallen him, had shown real magnanimity. Without a moment’s delay, she set out for Paris--she was at Valery at the time--sent the prince messages assuring him of her sympathy and devotion, and begged the Queen-Mother to allow her to join him. Her request, however, was refused, and she received orders to leave Paris at once and return to Valery. Now, however, she did not plead in vain, and Louis XIII not only granted her request, but gave her permission to take with her “one demoiselle and her little dwarf, who had begged his Majesty to consent to his not abandoning his mistress.” The same day (May 26) the princess entered the Bastille, “where she was received by _Monsieur le Prince_ with every demonstration of affection, nor did he leave her in repose until she had said that she forgave him.”[124] In the following October, the authorities of the Bastille were discovered to be conniving at a secret correspondence which Barbin was carrying on with the Queen-Mother, and first Bournonville, the Lieutenant of the fortress, and brother of the Governor, the Baron de Persan, and subsequently Persan himself, were arrested.[125] Bassompierre was then sent with sixty Swiss to take charge of the Bastille, but he did not have the Prince and Princesse de Condé under his supervision, as, about a month previously, they had been transferred to the Château of Vincennes, where Condé was allowed a great deal more liberty than had been permitted him in Paris. Bassompierre only remained at the Bastille about ten days, at the end of which he received orders to hand over the command to the new favourite’s youngest brother, Brantes. In December Bassompierre went to Normandy to attend the assembly of the Notables which Louis XIII was holding at Rouen. While he was there, news arrived that the Princesse de Condé had given birth to a still-born child and was in a critical condition; and the King being desirous of sending some important personages to make inquiries on her behalf, or, in the event of the princess being dead, to offer his condolences to Condé, Bassompierre and the Duc de Guise offered to go. They set out in a coach, a kind of conveyance which did not usually lend itself to rapid travelling; but, by arranging for an unusual number of relays, reached Paris the same day, and made the return journey with similar expedition. Bassompierre assures us that never before had a journey by coach been made in so short a time at that season of the year. The princess recovered, “though she was more than forty-eight hours without movement or feeling,” and “never was a person in greater extremity without dying.”[126] CHAPTER XIX