it that the modern Delilah triumphed, and that the King was induced to promise the required document;[72] a weakness rendered the less excusable, if indeed, as Sully broadly asserts: "Henry was not so blind but that he saw clearly how this woman sought to deceive him. I say nothing of the reasons which he also had to believe her to be anything rather than a vestal; nor of the state intrigues of which her father, her mother, her brother, and herself had been convicted, and which had drawn down upon all the family an order to leave Paris, which I had quite recently signified to them in the name of his Majesty." [73]
As it is difficult to decide which of the two the Duke sought in his Memoirs to praise the most unsparingly, the sovereign or himself, the epithet of "this weak Prince," which he applies to Henry on the present occasion, proves the full force of his annoyance. He, moreover, gives a very detailed account of an interview which took place between them upon the subject of the document in question; even declaring that he tore it up when his royal master placed it in his hands; and upon being asked by the King if he were mad, had replied by saying: "Would to God that I were the only madman in France!" [74] As, however, I do not find the same anecdote recorded elsewhere by any contemporaneous authority, I will not delay the narrative by inserting it at length; and the rather as, although from the influence subsequently exercised over the fortunes of Marie de Medicis by the frail favourite I have already been compelled to dwell thus long upon her history, it is one which I am naturally anxious to abridge as much as possible. I shall therefore only add that the same biographer goes on to state that the contract which he had destroyed was rewritten by the King himself, who within an hour afterwards was on horseback and on his way to Malesherbes, where he sojourned two days. It is, of course, impossible to decide whether Henry had ever seriously contemplated the fulfilment of so degrading an engagement; but it is certain that only a few months subsequently he presented to Mademoiselle d'Entragues the estate of Verneuil, and that thenceforward she assumed the title of Marquise, coupled with the name of her new possession.[75]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, was the brother of Charles, Duc de Mayenne, and of Louis, Cardinal de Guise. He was the chief of the League, and excited a popular revolt on the day of the Barricades, in the hope of possessing himself of the crown. Henri III caused him to be assassinated at Blois, in the year 1588. He was distinguished as le Balafré by the people, in consequence of the deep scar of a wound across the face by which he was disfigured.
[3] Catherine was the second daughter of François de Clèves, Duc de Nevers, and of Marguerite de Bourbon-Vendôme, the aunt of Henri IV. Her dower consisted of the county of Eu, in Normandy. She was twice married; first to Antoine de Croi, Prince de Portien, by whom she had no issue; and secondly, to Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise. She died in 1633, at the age of eighty-five years.
[4] She heard three masses every day, one high and two low ones, and took the holy communion each week on the Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays.--Letters of Etienne Pasquier, book xxii. letter v. col. 666, of the folio edition.
[5] By some extraordinary presentiment they always imagined that they saw a King of France in the Prince of Navarre, even at a time when the greatest obstacles were opposed to such an idea.--Dreux du Radier, Mémoires des Reines et Régentes de France, vol. v. p. 130. See also Mémoires de Sully, vol. i. pp. 60–67.
[6] Dreux du Radier, vol. v. p. 182.
[7] Hist. des Reines et Régentes de France, vol. ii. p. 4.
[8] Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, first Prince of the Blood, and Grand Master of France, was born in 1552, and succeeded his father, the Comte Louis, who was killed at the battle of Jarnac, on the 13th of May 1569, in the command of the Protestant party, conjointly with the King of Navarre (Henri IV). He made a levy of foreign troops in 1575, distinguished himself at Coutras in 1587, and died by poison the following year at St. Jean d'Angély.
[9] Ambroise Paré was born at Laval (Mayenne), in 1509. He commenced his public career as surgeon of the infantry-general Réné de Montejean; and on his return to France, having taken his degrees at the College of St. Edmé, he was elected Provost of the Corporation of Surgeons. In 1552, Henri II gave him the appointment of body-surgeon to the King, a post which he continued to fill under Francis II, Charles IX, and Henri III. Charles IX, whose life he saved when he had nearly fallen a victim to the want of skill of his physician Portail, who, in opening a vein, had inflicted a deep and dangerous wound in his arm, repaid the benefit by concealing him in his own chamber during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Paré was a zealous Calvinist. He died in 1590. His published works consist of one folio volume, divided into twenty-eight books.
[10] Gillone Goyon, dite de Matignon, demoiselle de Torigni, was the daughter of Jacques de Matignon, Marshal of France, and of Françoise de Daillon, who was subsequently married to Pierre de Harcourt, Seigneur de Beuvron.
[11] Lévi Alvarès, Hist. Clas. des Reines et Régentes de France, p. 185.
[12] Dupleix, Hist. de Louis XIII, p. 53.
[13] Sully, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 45.
[14] Catherine de Bourbon, Princesse de Navarre, and sister of Henri IV, was born at Paris in 1558. After his accession to the throne of France, Henry gave her in marriage to Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Bar. She refused to change her religion, even when her brother had done so, and died, without issue, in 1604, at Nancy.
[15] Mémoires de Marguerite, pp. 176, 177.
[16] Anne, Duc de Joyeuse, Admiral and Peer of France, first gentleman of the bedchamber, and Governor of Normandy, was born in 1561. He was one of the mignons of Henri III, who, in 1582, gave him in marriage Marguerite de Lorraine, the sister of the Queen Louise de Vaudemont. He commanded the troops in Guienne against the Huguenots, where he exercised the greatest cruelties; and having been defeated at the battle of Coutras in 1587, he was put to death by the conquerors.
[17] This child, called by Bassompierre le Père Archange, and by Dupleix le Père Ange, was the son of Jacques de Harlay de Chanvallon, known at Court as "the handsome Chanvallon," and was the individual who, as the confessor of the Marquise de Verneuil, became one of the most active agents in the conspiracy which was formed against Henri IV and the French Princes.
[18] Dreux du Radier, vol. v. p. 176.
[19] Mézeray, vol. iii. p. 546. Varillas, Histoire de Henri III, book vii.
[20] D'Aubigny, Hist. vol. ii. book v. ch. iii. (1583). Confession de Sancy, ch. vii. p. 447. Duplessis-Mornay.
[21] Duplessis-Mornay, Mém. p. 203.
[22] in the name of Henri III. Jacques Govon de Matignon, Prince de Mortagne, was the representative of a family of Brittany which traced its descent from the thirteenth century, and had been established in Normandy towards the middle of the fifteenth. Born at Lonray in 1526, he was appointed Lieutenant-General of Normandy in 1559, where he made himself conspicuous by his persecution of the Huguenots. Henri III recompensed his services, in 1579, by the bâton of a maréchal, and the collar of his Order. He subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of the army in Picardy, then Lieutenant-General of Guienne, and finally, Governor of that province. He died in 1597.
[23] Lévi Alvarès, p. 187.
[24] Governor of Auvergne.
[25] The fortress of Usson, which had been a state prison under Louis XI, was demolished by Louis XIII, in 1634.
[26] Brantôme, Dames Illustres, Marguerite de France, Reine de Navarre, Dis. v. p. 275.
[27] "There are three things," Henri IV was wont to say, "that the world will not believe, and yet they are certainly true: that the Queen of England (Elizabeth) died a maid; that the Archduke (Albert, Cardinal and Archduke of Austria) is a great captain; and that the King of France is a very good Catholic."--L'Etoile, Journ. de Henri IV, vol. i. p. 233.
[28] Diane d'Andouins, Vicomtesse de Louvigni, dame de l'Escun, was the only daughter of Paul, Vicomte de Louvigni, Seigneur de l'Escun, and of Marguerite de Cauna. While yet a mere