His health too, that best inheritance from his mother, had been ruined by bad climates and insufficient food. On {267} his arrival at Nantes he fell dangerously ill, nor was he ever again wholly free from suffering. His illness created no small consternation among the Royalists, and much sympathy was poured out upon him. "Think of your health," urged one friend, "and if you dare venture on your old apothecary you may, from whom you will receive some drugs, well meant, if not well prepared."[7] This tempting offer was probably declined. The Palatines had ideas of their own upon the subject of medicine, a profound distrust of doctors, and a very reasonable aversion to the then universal practice of bleeding. "Pray God she fall not into the Frenchified physician's hands, and so let blood and die!"[8] Rupert wrote of a fair friend, at a later date, On the present occasion he recovered from his illness, with or without the aid of physicians, and in April hastened to join his cousin, King Charles. At Paris he met with as warm a reception as he could have desired. Not only the English exiles, but the French Court also hastened to do him honour. The Queen Regent and Mazarin had always been his good friends, and now his strange adventures had fired the imagination of the young King Louis, who "complimented him in an extraordinary manner."[9] Indeed Rupert, with his romantic history, his striking personality, gigantic stature, and supposed magical powers,[10] not to mention his accredited wealth, his monkeys and "blackamours," made a considerable sensation in the excitable world of Paris. Many were the anonymous letters addressed to him by fair hands; but for some time his bad health and his sorrowful heart made him indifferent to the adulation bestowed on him. "Prince Rupert goes little abroad in France, and is very sad that {268} he can hear nothing of his brother Maurice,"[11] was the report made by Cromwell's spies. And wrote Hyde, April 25, 1653: "Prince Rupert is not yet well enough to venture to go abroad, and therefore hath not visited the French Court, but I hope he will within a day or two. Of Prince Maurice we hear not one word."[12] But as his health improved, Rupert relaxed his austerity and joined his Stuart cousins in their amusements. He was often to be seen in the hall of the Palais Royal, playing at billiards with the King and the Duke of York,[13] and sometimes he swam with them in the Seine. On one such occasion he was very nearly drowned; he was seized with cramp, and had already gone under water, when one of his train rescued him by the hair of his head. "The River Seine had like to have made an end of your black Prince Rupert," wrote one of the Puritan spies who watched all his actions, "for, some days since, he would needs cool himself in the river, where he was in danger of drowning, but, by the help of one of his blackmores, escaped."[14]