Auvergne, of royal blood, and the Baron de Lux. The Prince de Joinville, the Duke de Bouillon, the Baron de Fontanelle, and Montbarrault, governor of Rennes, were more or less suspected of not being altogether strangers to the duke's proceedings. Sticli, however, was the high credit and influence of the Marechalde Biron, that the king did not think it prudent to attempt his arrest in an open manner; and, as the chronicle states, the monarch had still so much affection for him that he concluded his impetuous spirit had been misled by the rogues into whose hands he had fallen, and hoped by his influence over his friend to lead him to a full confession. With this view, aud with the secret determination of making his clemency commensurate only with Biron's candour, Henry summoned the duke to attend him at Fontainbleau.
La Fin had been to this royal residence ostensibly on the duke's business, but in reality to communicate with the officers of the crown, and to insure to himself the reward of his treachery towards Biron. He had secret interviews with the king at the royal vineyards, near the town ; with the chancellor by night, in his own house at Fontainbleau ; and in the heart of the forest with Sully. ' All," says the chronicle, " had horror at seeing the writings which they saw, and at hearing the designs which they heard." The chancellor, too, was so much impressed with the importance if the papers remitted to him by La Fin, that he sewed them up in a corner of his paw-point, and kept them by him day aud night. The duke had many misgivings after receiving the royal summons, and his friends were not backward in cautioning him not to trust himself at court; still he could not openly refuse the orders of the sovereign, and he journeyed slowly from Lyons to Fontainbleau with only a small retinue. " Against his journey," the chronicle relates, "he had many evil omens : a bird called the 'duke,' came into a room where he was sitting, before he set out, without any one knowing how it had entered. He gave orders that it should be care- fully kept and fed ; but as soon as he was gone it died. Incontinently thereon, the horse which the arch- duke had given him, and which he called the Pastrave, went mad, and 381 killed itself. The same did a horse which he had had from the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; and another which the Duke of Lorrain had given him fell ill. He arrived at Fontainbleau just at the time when nobody believed he would come that is to say, on the Wednesday, 13th of June, and when the king was beginning to think of taking horse within a few days to go into Burgandy. As his majesty was entering the great garden about six o'clock, he was heard to say to M. de Souvre, ' He will not come ;' but scarcely were the words out of his mouth, and he had taken a step or two, when the Duke de Biron was discovered approaching, amid a troop of seven or eight. The king, on per- ceiving him, said he was come just in time to lead him to his house. Biron advanced, and, still at some distance, made three profound salutations. The king embraced him, and told him he was come just in time to lead him to his house. This expression had an apparent signification, which was ac- cepted by those who believed that the king was speaking of a lodge in one of the pavilions of the garden ; but it had another secret one, understood only by a few, which meant that, if the duke did not make up his mind to humiliating submission, he would banish him from his favour and pre- sence, and would send him to one of his own seats." Biron began to make excuses for corning late ; but the king listened to only the first words of what he was going to say, and, taking the duke's hand, led him to see the new buildings he had been making, and walked him from one garden to another. The Duke d'Espernon seized an opportunity of whispering in Biron's ear that he would repent having trusted to his courage rather than his friends ; and soon after, the king, speaking to him of the causes of discontent that he had against him as a friend and subject, the duke only re~ plied by protestations of innocence, which were not free from certain pe- tulant expressions ill sujted to the pre- sence of royalty. When the time for dinner arrived in those days about eleven o'clock Biron was observed to commit a breach in etiquette, by asking the Duke d'Espernon for leave to make one of his table, whereas he ought to have dined at the table of the Grand*
