The King gave proof of his affection by the zeal with which he prepared for his cousin's reception in Paris; an honour apparently disputed with him by Rupert's brother Edward. "The King is very active in preparing a lodging for you," writes one of the Prince's friends. "If I be not deceived he would have liked well to have it left to him, of which the Prince, your brother, as I understand, gives you some account. I will send you more by the next, knowing no more as yet, but that the King hath it in his love for you to have you near him, which certainly is fitter than to have thought of another lodging, without his knowledge."[4]
But, alas! the Rupert who returned was not the Rupert who had sailed away three years before! He had, as Hyde expressed it, "endured strange hardness,"[5] and the "hardness" had left its mark upon him. He came back from his long voyage a changed and broken-hearted man. "His Highness's fire was pretty much decayed, and his judgment ripened," says Campbell; but the change went deeper than that. The Prince had failed in his undertaking; he had lost the greater part of his hard-won treasure, his ships, his men, above all his best-loved brother--and these losses had carried with them a part of his old self. The high spirits and buoyant hopefulness of earlier days were gone for ever. Gone too was something of the youthful generosity; Rupert was embittered now, harder, colder, more sardonic; a man, said Colbert, "with a natural inclination to believe evil!"[6]
His health too, that best inheritance from his mother, had been ruined by bad climates and insufficient food. On { 267} his arrival at Nantes he fell dangerously ill, nor was he ever again wholly free from suffering. His illness created no small consternation among the Royalists, and much sympathy was poured out upon him. "Think of your health," urged one friend, "and if you dare venture on your old apothecary you may, from whom you will receive some drugs, well meant, if not well prepared."[7] This tempting offer was probably declined. The Palatines had ideas of their own upon the subject of medicine, a profound distrust of doctors, and a very reasonable aversion to the then universal practice of bleeding. "Pray God she fall not into the Frenchified physician's hands, and so let blood and die!"[8] Rupert wrote of a fair friend, at a later date, On the present occasion he recovered from his illness, with or without the aid of physicians, and in April hastened to join his cousin, King Charles.