“On Thursday, this poor prince, after tilting at the ring, supped, feeling well. At midnight, he was seized with a very violent vomiting, which lasted till morning. All Friday he kept his bed. In the evening, he supped, and having slept well, he rose on Saturday morning, dined at table, and then played at chess. He rose from his chair, and walked up and down his chamber, chatting with one and the other. All at once, he said: ‘Give me my chair; I feel a great weakness.’ Scarcely was he seated when he lost the power of speech, and immediately expired. The effects of poison at once became apparent. “It is incredible the consternation which this has caused in that part of the country. I am starting at daybreak to travel thither with all speed. I see myself on the way to encounter much danger. Pray to God for me earnestly. If I escape it, it must be because it is He who had protected me. Up to the grave, to which I am perhaps nearer than I think, I shall remain your faithful slave. Good-night, my soul; I kiss your hands a thousand times.”[123] Next morning, the King of Navarre set out for Saint-Jean-d’Angely, “to console my cousin, _Madame la Princesse_, and to prevent our enemies from profiting by our losses and misfortunes and by my absence.”[124] On the second day of his journey, however, he was met by a courier, with intelligence which convinced him that the bereaved princess was an object of something very different from sympathy. “There arrived yesterday,” he writes to his Corisande, “the one at midday, the other in the evening, two couriers. The first reported that Belcastel, the page of _Madame la Princesse_,[125] and her first _valet de chambre_[126] had fled, immediately after seeing their master dead. They found two horses worth two hundred écus at an inn in the faubourg, where they had been kept for a fortnight, and each had a wallet full of money. On being questioned, the innkeeper stated that it was a person named Brilland who had given him the horses, and that he came every day to tell him to treat them well; that if he gave four measures of oats to the other horses, he was to give them eight, and that he would pay double. This Brilland is a man whom _Madame la Princesse_ had placed in her Household and given the charge of everything. He was immediately arrested. He confesses to have given one thousand écus to the page and to have purchased the horses, by his mistress’s order, to go to Italy. [Illustration: CHARLOTTE CATHERINE DE LA TRÉMOILLE, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ FROM AN ENGRAVING BY MIGER, AFTER THE PAINTING BY LE MONNIER]