overwhelm her with the coarsest and most cutting reproaches; and not
satisfied with expatiating upon the treachery of which she had been
guilty towards himself, he passed in review the whole of her ill-spent
life, accusing her, among other enormities, of the birth of an
illegitimate son,[17] and terminated his invectives by commanding her
instantly "to quit Paris, and rid the Court of her presence." [18]

On the morrow Marguerite accordingly left the capital with even less
state than she had entered it, for she had neither suite nor equipage,
and was accompanied only by Madame de Duras and Mademoiselle de Béthune,
her two favourite attendants. She was not, however, suffered to depart
even thus without impediment, for she had only travelled a few leagues
when, between Saint-Cler and Palaiseau, her litter was stopped by a
captain of the royal guard, at the head of a troop of harquebusiers:
she was compelled to remove her mask; and her companions, after having
been subjected to great discourtesy, were finally conveyed as prisoners
to the Abbey of Ferrières, near Montargis, where they underwent an
examination, at which the King himself presided,[19] and wherein facts
were elicited that were fatal to the character of their mistress. Their
replies were then reduced to writing; and Marguerite, who had been
detained for this express purpose, was compelled by her inexorable
brother to affix her signature to the disgraceful document; when, after
she had been subjected to this new indignity, the daughter of Catherine
de Medicis was at length permitted to pursue her journey; but she was
compelled to do so alone, as her two attendants were forbidden to bear
her company.

She had no sooner left Ferrières than Henri III despatched one of the
valets of his wardrobe to St. Foix, where the King of Navarre was for
the moment sojourning, with an autograph letter, in which he informed