The fêtes of Fontainebleau--Charles IX. and Catherine set out on a grand progress through the kingdom--Dangerous illness of the Princesse de Condé--Her husband obliged to remain with her--Scandalous _dénoûment_ of the amours of Condé and Isabelle de Limeuil--Indignation of the Queen-Mother--Isabelle and the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon--The Comte de Maulevrier accuses Isabelle of having plotted to poison the prince--She is arrested and conducted to the Franciscan convent at Auxonne--Tender correspondence between her and Du Fresne--Passionate letters of Condé to his mistress--Isabelle denies the charges against her--Her letter to Catherine--She is removed to Vienne--Her despair--Her pathetic letters to Condé--She is examined by the Bishops of Orléans and Limoges, and confronted by Maulevrier. The Court was very gay that winter. At the beginning of the spring, Charles IX. and Catherine were to set out on a grand progress through the kingdom, which was expected to occupy the better part of two years; and, before their departure, Catherine wished to revive the magnificent fêtes of which Fontainebleau had been the theatre in the days of “_le Roi chevalier_.” In the vast galleries where Primaticcio has immortalized the beauty of her rival Diane de Poitiers, she entertained the _élite_ of the nobility of France, Catholics and Protestants being invited without distinction. Hunting-parties, tilting-matches, mimic combats on foot and on horseback, balls, banquets and theatrical representations filled the days and nights; the princes and great nobles vied with one another in the sumptuousness of the entertainments which they, in return, offered to their young Sovereign and his mother; and a stranger who had been suddenly transported into the midst of all this gaiety and extravagant splendour would have found it difficult to believe that he was in a country where the ashes of a desolating civil war had scarcely had time to grow cold. One of the features of the fêtes was a grand banquet, followed by a “_ballet-comédie_,” which Catherine gave at the Vacherie. Isabelle de Limeuil figured in it, in the character of Hebe, and “attired in a tunic of transparent gauze, which permitted one to catch a glimpse of limbs which the goddess might have envied,” was the cynosure of all eyes. Condé was no doubt not a little flattered by the admiration which his lady-love was arousing, and it is to be hoped that the charms which she so freely displayed sufficed to preserve him from the manœuvres of her fair colleagues in the Queen’s service, who, we are told, were indefatigable in their efforts to detach him from her. At the Court of Charles IX., it was something even to be faithful in infidelity!