When to ordinary senility there is added the intolerable desire that accompanies such trouble as I have mentioned, all other considerations are cast to the winds. After his marriage to Marie de’ Medici Henri abandoned even the pretence of decency. Marie seems to have had to let him go his own way. As for him, he complained that she made his life a hell upon earth, and he attempted to assuage his wounded feelings with every other girl who came his way. There were many such who yielded to the king while they mocked at the elderly man with their younger lovers. Then, in 1609 he met Charlotte de Montmorency, a charming and beautiful maiden of fifteen. He saw her while she was rehearsing for a mask, dressed up as a nymph of Diana. He was passionately arrested by her beauty, but soon afterwards was laid up with an attack of gout. Alas, Charlotte was already engaged to a M. de Bassompierre; but this did not daunt the conqueror of Gabrielle d’Estrees. He had dealt with such trifles before. As he lay groaning with the gout he thought out a brilliant scheme, which he amazingly proposed to M. de Bassompierre. He sent for the young man, told him that he was frantically in love with Charlotte, and asked him to give up the idea of marrying her so that the damsel should be free to become Henri’s platonic mistress, with all her virginal beauty untouched. And de Bassompierre actually agreed to give up his bride. Naturally Charlotte was deeply aggrieved, and gave her easy-going and youthful lover such a withering glance that he retired in mortification to his own room and could not eat for three days. But that did not mean that Henri was to possess her; for, in the easy fashion of those days, he married her to the Prince de Condé, who was supposed to think only of hunting and field-sports and not at all about women. But Condé’s nature changed after marriage to a beautiful girl, as any cynic might have expected; and he became mightily annoyed when he saw the king aping the young man in silks and satins, and paying violent court to his beautiful young wife; nor was Charlotte so discreet as she might have been, for she received from him desperate love-letters and poems, and answered them erotically and foolishly. The young husband and the elderly lover quarrelled fiercely, and Henri lost what dignity he still possessed. Then Condé took her away for safety to a castle near Flanders; Henri followed, and stood by the roadside, disguised as one of his own huntsmen, with a patch over one eye that he might have the joy of gazing upon her for a moment. Seeing her at a window, he would bow and kiss his hand, placing the other hand over his heart, and assuming all the ridiculous antics of an elderly lover on the stage. The Duc de Montmorency, her father, wished Charlotte to yield that he might gain the favour of the king. When Condé heard this he thought he had better take more active measures, so the young couple hastened over the border,