It was in the latter part of the Carnival, the Saturday night preceding Shrove Tuesday, 1610.  The winter had been a rigorous one in Brussels, and the snow lay in drifts three feet deep in the streets.  Within and about the splendid palace of Nassau there was much commotion.  Lights and flambeaux were glancing, loud voices, martial music, discharge of pistols and even of artillery were heard together with the trampling of many feet, but there was nothing much resembling the wild revelry or cheerful mummery of that holiday season.  A throng of the great nobles of Belgium with drawn swords and menacing aspect were assembled in the chief apartments, a detachment of the Archduke’s mounted body-guard was stationed in the courtyard, and five hundred halberdiers of the burgher guilds kept watch and ward about the palace.

The Prince of Conde, a square-built, athletic young man of middle stature, with regular features, but a sulky expression, deepened at this moment into ferocity, was seen chasing the secretary of the French resident minister out of the courtyard, thwacking him lustily about the shoulders with his drawn sword, and threatening to kill him or any other Frenchman on the spot, should he show himself in that palace.  He was heard shouting rather than speaking, in furious language against the King, against Coeuvres, against Berny, and bitterly bewailing his misfortunes, as if his wife were already in Paris instead of Brussels.

Upstairs in her own apartment which she had kept for some days on pretext of illness sat the Princess Margaret, in company’ of Madame de Berny, wife of the French minister, and of the Marquis de Coeuvres, Henry’s special envoy, and a few other Frenchmen.  She was passionately fond of dancing.  The adoring cardinal described her as marvellously graceful and perfect in that accomplishment.  She had begged her other adorer, the Marquis Spinola, “with sweetest words,” that she might remain a few days longer in the Nassau Palace before removing to the Archduke’s residence, and that the great general, according to the custom in France and Flanders, would be the one to present her with the violins.  But Spinola, knowing the artifice concealed beneath these “sweetest words,” had summoned up valour enough to resist her blandishments, and had refused a second entertainment.

It was not, therefore, the disappointment at losing her ball that now made the Princess sad.  She and her companions saw that there had been a catastrophe; a plot discovered.  There was bitter disappointment and deep dismay upon their faces.  The plot had been an excellent one.  De Coeuvres had arranged it all, especially instigated thereto by the father of the Princess acting in concurrence with the King.  That night when all was expected to be in accustomed quiet, the Princess, wrapped in her mantilla, was to have stolen down into the garden, accompanied only by her maid the adventurous and faithful Philipotte,