“I was one of those,” writes Fiefbrun, “who were chosen to report this piteous calamity to Madame his wife, whom I found descending the steps of her hôtel to come and visit him in his little lodging, where she expected to find him alive, since she had as yet no idea that he was so near his last day. As soon as she caught sight of me, she suspected her misfortune, and pressing me to tell her in a few words, she fell down in a swoon, and was carried immediately to her bed, where she broke forth into the most terrible lamentations, accompanied by so many sobs and sighs that they could not be imagined save by those who saw and heard them. They were so violent that I am often astonished that they did not occasion a miscarriage.”[121] In view of what we are about to relate, Fiefbrun’s account of the manner in which the Princesse de Condé received the news of her husband’s death is of extreme importance. The rapidity of the malady, and the fact that decomposition set in within two hours after death, “gave cause to the doctors and surgeons to suspect that there had been some extraordinary and violent cause.” By order of the prince’s council, two other surgeons were called in, and an autopsy performed. This served to confirm their suspicions. “We have found,” runs their report, “all the stomach, particularly towards the right part, black, burned, gangreened, and ulcerated, which, in our opinion, can only have been caused by a quantity of burning, ulcerating, and caustic poison, which poison has left evident traces of its passage in the esophagus. The liver, in the part adjoining the aforesaid channel, was altered and burned, and all the rest of the organ livid, as were also the lungs. There was not a single part of his Excellency’s body which was not very sound and very healthy, if the violent poison had not destroyed and corrupted the parts mentioned.”[122] Meanwhile, orders had been given that all the late prince’s servants were to be placed under arrest, and a courier had been despatched to the King of Navarre, who was at Nérac. Under date 10 March, 1588, we find Henri writing to the Comtesse de Gramont as follows: “To finish describing myself, there has happened to me one of the greatest calamities that I could possibly fear, which is the sudden death of _Monsieur le Prince_. I mourn for him as he ought to have been to me, not as he was. I am assured of being the only target at which the perfidies of the Mass are aimed. They have poisoned him, the traitors!