When Henry found that his intended prey was beyond his reach, his behaviour resembled rather that of a madman than of a sage monarch, at the mature age of fifty-seven. He ran about asking advice of his courtiers, the ministers were summoned, councils were held, parties of troops were despatched to seize the fugitives, and war was threatened against Spain, if she refused to give them up. When Sully was told of what had happened, he replied in a surly tone, “I am not astonished at it, sire; I foresaw it clearly and warned you of it; and had you taken my advice a fortnight ago, when he was going to Moret, you would have put him into the Bastile, where you would find him now, and where I should have kept a good watch over him for you.” Such was the morality of the austere Sully! This “well-seeming Angelo,” who has been praised, at least as much as he deserves, could be indignant at the idea of the monarch marrying Henrietta d’Entragues, his mistress; but he could see no dishonour in that monarch breaking his plighted word, as well as all moral obligations, by seducing the wife of his nephew; nor in he himself volunteering his assistance to forward an adulterous intercourse, by prompting the seizure of the injured husband, and becoming his gaoler! It was not without reason that the prince dreaded to trust his wife within the corrupted atmosphere of the French court. Had she remained there, it appears certain that she must have fallen. As it was, her fidelity was, for a moment, on the point of being shaken. Henrietta was little more than sixteen, and the glory of the sovereign, his boundless generosity to her, and his idolatrous fondness, dazzled her imagination so far, that, while she was at Brussels, a correspondence was actually carried on between them. An attempt was made by Henry’s emissaries to carry her off, but it failed. When d’Estrées, marquis of Cœuvres, who conducted this attempt, was reproached for his baseness by Condé, his defence was, that he had acted upon orders from the king his master, and that it was his duty to execute them, whether they were just or unjust. Henrietta repaired her momentary error by her subsequent conduct. Not believing himself to be safe, Condé removed to Milan, where he published a manifesto to justify his having quitted France. From policy he passed over in silence the main cause of his flight; but he indemnified himself by pouring forth all the bitterness of his resentment on Sully, whom he painted in the darkest colours. Some overtures were made, to lure the prince back to France, but they were ineffectual. But, while Henry was preparing to carry war into the territory of his neighbours, he fell by the hand of an assassin, and the way was thus opened for the return of the prince.