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"And it must be owned," says Lenet, "that she had a particular talent for speaking in public, and that nothing could be better, more appropriate, nor more conformable to her position than what she said."
The Princess's retinue enhanced not a little this favourable impression, formed as it was of high-born women, for the most part young and charming. The popular explosion was lively, as always happens among the people of the south. But even the narrative of Lenet shows clearly the slender foundation upon which this semblance of popular insurrection rested.
Lenet, who never quitted the Princess de Condé throughout these troubles, but served her faithfully with his pen and advice. Montreuil, who, although he had never published anything, was a member of the French Academy and secretary to the Prince de Condé.
The Princess of Conde and her young son left Chantilly to join them; Madame de Longueville occupied Stenay, a strong place belonging to the Prince of Conde: she had there found Turenne; on the other hand, the queen had just been through Normandy; all the towns had opened their gates to her; it was just the same in Burgundy; the Princess of Conde's able agent, Lenet, could not obtain a declaration from the Parliament of Dijon in her favor.
At the moment of the arrest of the Prince, whilst the Princess-dowager was conferring with her adherents upon the best measures to be adopted for the deliverance of the Princes and for the safety of her little grandson, the young Princess, overcoming her timidity, interrupted Lenet, who was proposing a plan for their flight, and another for a campaign, and, after the humblest tokens of respect and deference for her mother-in-law, entreated her not to separate her from her son, protesting that she would follow him everywhere joyfully, whatsoever might be the peril, and that she would expose herself to any risk to aid her husband.
She escapes from Chantilly on foot, with her son and a small band of faithful followers, traverses Paris, whence she reaches, in three days and by devious roads, Montrond, the place pointed out by Lenet as the safest retreat and the most advantageous to defend. Her letters to the Queen and ministers, to the magistrates, to her relatives, are stamped with nobility and firmness.
But later, when the campaign at Bordeaux had ended, the Prince still a prisoner at Havre, forwarding a communication in cypher to Lenet, added thereto a short note for the Princess, couched in terms so tender that Lenet, fearing lest in the exuberance of her delight the Princess might betray the secret of that correspondence, hesitated for some moments to communicate it to her.
So she repaired to Montroud, where the younger Princess of Conde had retired, and was acting by the advice of M. Lenet, the Prince's chief confidant. The next thing we heard of her was astonishing enough. The Princess, a delicate sickly woman, together with our little Countess, had left Montroud in the night with fifty horses.
"I think," she writes to Lenet on the 22nd August, 1650, "that the news of the birth of M. d'Orleans' son will no more rejoice my sister-in-law than it has delighted me. It is to my nephew that we must offer our condolence." In 1651, that ambition was carried to its highest pitch.
One must turn to Lenet for all the details of that toilsome journey and of the insurrection at Bordeaux, which he has related with all the minutiæ and animation of an eye-witness and an actor who more than once figured in the front rank. No longer timid, no longer awkward, in presence of danger the daughter of Marshal de Brézé became the amazon and almost the heroine.
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