This point having been conceded, immediate preparations were made for the proclamation of the royal marriages; but the ceremony was unavoidably delayed by the death of the Duke of Mantua, the brother-in-law of the Regent, and did not take place until the 5th of the following month,[139] on which day it was solemnly announced by the Chancellor, in the presence of the Prince de Conti, the peers and officers of the Crown, and the Spanish Ambassador, who gave his assent to the duplicate alliance in the name of the King his master, and from that period treated the little Princess with all the honours due to a Queen of Spain; never addressing her save on his bended knee, and observing many still more exaggerated ceremonies which excited at once surprise and amusement at the French Court. It will have been remarked that neither M. de Condé nor the Comte de Soissons were present at the formal announcement, both having once more withdrawn from the capital with the determination of continuing absent until the majority of the King, in order to avoid signing the marriage contract. "The Queen," said M. de Soissons, when one of his friends would have dissuaded him from so extreme a course, "is quite able to conclude without our assistance the negotiation into which she has entered. God grant that we at least may be spared all participation in the slight offered to the memory of the late King, by refusing to falsify the pledge which he gave to the Duke of Savoy, whose house has so long been the firm ally of France." Pity it is that this generous burst of high-mindedness and loyalty will not bear analysis. Both the Princes had discovered that the professions to which they had so complacently listened, and which had induced their recent return to Court, had merely been intended to lure them thither at a period when their presence was more than ever essential to the interests of the Regency; and while M. de Condé found his position in the Government as undefined and unsatisfactory as ever, and that his vanity had been flattered at the expense of his interests, the Count on his side saw the possession of Quilleboeuf more remote than ever, and openly declared that they had both been duped. This undisguised admission at once revealed the selfishness of the views with which the malcontent Princes had lent themselves to the wishes of Marie and her ministers; and assuredly no worse policy could have been adopted than that by which they were again induced to exile themselves from their proper sphere of action. Too many interests were, however, served by their absence for either counsellor or courtier to point out to the Queen the extreme danger of driving them to extremities, save in the instance of the Connétable, who, more and more chagrined by the pitiful and even precarious position occupied by his son-in-law, remonstrated earnestly with the Regent upon the peril of the course which she had been induced to pursue.