In vain, the King endeavoured to reassure him as to the innocence of his intentions; in vain, the Constable, at his Majesty’s request, made the strongest representations to his son-in-law. Condé was deaf to all appeals, and, towards the middle of June, carried off his wife to Valery, in the hope that, during his absence, the King’s passion might cool or be diverted to some fresh object. Henri IV. was in despair. In obedience to his orders, the poet Malherbe consented “to degrade his muse to the office of pander,”[151] and composed stanzas wherein the King, under the name of Alcandre, cries: Il faut que je cesse de vivre Si je veux cesser de souffrir; and the princess, under the name of Orante, replies: La cœur outrée du même ennui, Jurait que s’il mourait pour elle, Elle mourait aussi pour lui.[152] Condé and his wife remained at Valery until the first week in July, when they were compelled to return to Court, in order to attend the marriage of César de Vendôme, Henri IV.’s eldest son by Gabrielle d’Estrées, and Mlle. de Mercœur. The King’s passion became more violent than ever, and his conduct would have been ludicrous to the last degree had it been less culpable. Not only did he continue to commission Malherbe to bombard the princess with elegies and sonnets, but “one saw him alter in less than no time his hair, his beard, and his countenance.” He who had hitherto been distinguished from the nobles of his Court by the simplicity and even negligence of his attire, might now be seen dressing and adorning himself with as much care as the youngest and most dandified of his courtiers, and, on one occasion, he appeared at a tilting-match wearing “a scented ruff, a doublet with sleeves of Chinese satin, and the colours of the Princesse de Condé, who called him ‘her knight.’”[153] “The King is well and grows younger every day,” wrote Malherbe to his friend Peiresc. The unfortunate husband began to “play the devil” again, and, though Henri, in the hope of bending him to his will, had the meanness to give orders to Sully that the instalment of his pension due at Midsummer should not be paid him, and to threaten him with even more severe measures unless he mended his ways, his complaints grew louder than ever. Violent scenes took place between him and the King, in one of which Condé allowed the word “tyranny” to escape him, and his Majesty, losing all control of himself, replied that the only occasion on which he had merited such a reproach was when he had recognized the prince for what he was not--that is to say, a legitimate son. Finally, Condé took his wife back to Valery, and, though Henri employed every means in his power to induce him to return, it was to no purpose. “Beaumont,” writes the King to the Constable, on 23 September, “returned yesterday, and says that he found our friend (Condé) more unmanageable than ever. He leaves Valery this morning for Muret.”[154]