Bere, far from the court, dwelt a reverend sage, By a hundred dark ways; slow progress they 'Midst meadows enamelled and murmuring "Then far from the court this asylum I gained, streams, To weep o'er the insults religion sustained; Life's stormy passions were scattered like Here my last years are cheered by hope's flat dreams; And no other desire now entered his breast Than to pass from this life to his heavenly rest. The God whom he worshipped took care of his age, Shed a wisdom divine on the head of the sage: tering tale, That so novel a worship cannot always prevail; As from human caprice it has first drawn its breath, Those who witnessed its birth will, too, witness its death. Man's works, like himself, are fragile and vain; The factious purpose God will not sustain. The sage, whom, by God's will, the hero should God only is steadfast; and while in this age meet, Now partakes of a meal in his humble retreat; The numberless sects a relentless war wage, At the footstool of God truth will humbly reside, But seldom enlightening a man in his pride. Who seeks her in earnest shall not seek in vain; When, leaving the court to converse with him-You wish for the light; you shall that boon ob self, The monarch his diadem laid on the shelf. tain. You are chosen of God; by his mighty arm led; The state of the church, her troubles, and By the eye of Omniscience your glory is seen; source, Now furnished a topic for useful discourse. Mornay, whose faith could in no wise be shaken, His stand in the Calvinist doctrine had taken. The battle is won, and your laurels are green; But hope not in Paris an entry to find Till the truth from above has enlightened your mind. The incense refuse when by flattery assailed; King and people had suffered, and anarchy reigned. O'er this land, by the blood of her heroes defended, Of your passions beware; for not distant the day sway. In short, when, by efforts no dangers appall, You have conquered the League, and yourself above all, In that terrible siege when your foes you relieve, descended, A woman the sceptre as sovereign sways, amaze, Elizabeth named, who, with consummate skill, And the people, astonished, your bounty re- Whose yoke the indomitable English can love; That should finally shine with meridian blaze. It was not God's purpose himself to reveal. For his virtues, though great, were by error While the sage to the prince was thus speaking the word To join glory with peace, as in this happy land? That entered the heart, since it came from the Ye monarchs, behold the example proposed! Lord, His voice the wild tumult of winds bid to cease; To the shore they proceed; the vessel sets sail; The portals of war by a woman are closed, In London, that city immense, he arrives, Where abundance, protected by liberty, thrives. The Tower the Conqueror founded is seen.12 When England he saw, he could well under- Further rises the palace of England's queen. stand His way to the sovereign straightway he wends, How happy the change that now favored the And Mornay alone on his footsteps attends. land. Poup, equipage, show, are at once laid aside, Long abuse of the laws, though in wisdom or- Which the great may affect, but which heroes deride. dained, He speaks, and with eloquence frankness in- But such varied rumors are spread in her spires, flight, For the succor of France he makes known his That falsehood and truth but too often unite. desires. He even disdains not to supplicate aid; By submission, his great heart is still greater made. "You Valois obey?" said the queen in surprise; For receiving such rumors I have no reason seen; But you to these quarrels a witness have been. From no other source I the statement can gain, "At his mandate you visit the Thames for sup- And you only are worthy yourself to explain. plies? What is Henry pleading the cause of his foes And the man to whose malice his troubles he owes? From the rise of the sun to its bed in the west The brait of your strifes has the nations possessed; And the arm that the trembling Valois has scared, In his cause I behold now in friendship is bared!" "His misfortunes," said Henry, "have my enmity slain; The wars and successes your experience brings "Alas!" said the Bourbon, "must memory, The reign of those terrors again bring to view? and shame? From the bare recollection I shrink with dismay; But as you give command, it is mine to obey. Valois once was a slave: he has broken his Another in speaking might artifice use, chain. Had he on my faith or his valor relied, Their crimes might disguise, or their frailties excuse; He had found all the aid which he needed sup- But I cannot descend to a measure so weak, plied; But he intrigues and strategems weakly employed, Baseness made him my foe, and all friendship destroyed. His faults I forget, since his danger I know; In this contest, great queen, we your sympathy And England fresh lustre will add to your name. Your virtues you'll crown as our rights you defend; 3At his feet, etc. The Duke of Anjou was In avenging the king you are royalty's friend." elected King of Poland at the instance of John A recital Elizabeth asks at his hands, mands, The source and connection, so striking and strange, That have wrought out in Paris this wonderful change. de Montluc, Bishop of Valence, ambassador of France at the court of Poland; and Henry went reluctantly to receive the crown. Having heard, in 1574, of the death of his brother, he hastened back to France. 4 Quelus and St. Megrim, etc. These persons were called the minions of Henry III. St. Luc, Livarot, Villequier, Duguast, and Maugiron also shared in his favors and debaucheries. It is certain he entertained for Quelus a passion capable of the greatest excesses. In his younger days, he was censured for his tastes. He also had a very equivocal friendship for the Duke of These bloody reverses been prompt to pro- Guise, whom he caused to be assassinated at "Already," she said, "has the trumpet of fame claim. Blois. Dr. Boucher in his book "De Justa Henrici Tertii Abdicatione," is bold to assert that the hatred of Henry III. for the Cardinal of Guise had no other foundation than the refusal he had experienced from him in his youth; but this story is like all the rest of the calumnies with which the book of Boucher is filled. Henry III. mixed, with his minions, religion to his debaucheries. With them he retired to seclusion, made pilgrimages, and inflicted on himself flagellations. He instituted the order of the "Brotherhood of Death," either on account of the death of his minions, or of that of the Princess of Conde, his mistress. The capuchins and monks were the directors of the brotherhood, among whom some of the citizens of Paris were admitted. This order was clad in black bolting-cloth, with a hood. In another brotherhood, on the contrary, that of the "White Penitents," his courtiers only were admitted. He believed, like many theologians of that day, that these mummeries expiated habitual sins. It is asserted that the statutes of these fraternities, their dress, and their rules, were the emblems of their amours, and that the poet Desportes, Abbot of Tyron, one of the most finished courtiers of that day, had explained them in a book which he afterwards committed to the flames. Henry III. lived in effeminacy, and affected the part of a coquette. He slept in gloves of a particular kind of skin to preserve the beauty of his hands, which were actually more delicate than those of the ladies of his court. He covered his face with a paste prepared for the purpose, over which he wore a mask; at least, it is so written in the book of the Hermophradites, which gives the minutest description of his sleeping, rising, and dressing. He observed the most punctilious neatness and propriety in his dress, and so important did he esteem these trifles, that he one day dismissed the Duke of Esperon from his presence because he appeared without pumps, and in a coat not properly but toned up. Quelus was killed in a duel, 27th of April, 1578. Louis of Maugiron, Baron of Ampus, was one of the minions for whom Henry had the greatest weakness. He was a young man of great courage and high expectations. He distinguished himself at the siege of Issoire, where he had the misfortune to lose an eye. Notwithstanding this mishap, he had still sufficient beauty remaining to make him acceptable to the king. He was compared to the Princess of Eboli, who, though, like himself, blind of one eye, was at the same time mistress of Philip II.. King of Spain. It is said that for this princess and Maugiron, an Italian wrote these four fine verses, since revived. Little boy, the eye that you have give to the damsel, Then you will be blind Cupid, and she will be Venus.' Maugiron was killed in taking the part of Quelus in a quarrel. Paul Stuart de Caussade de St. Maigrin, a gentleman from the neighborhood of Bordeaux, was beloved of Henry III. equally with Quelus and Maugiron, and his death was also as tragical. He was assassinated the 21st of July of the same year in the street St. Honore, about eleven o'clock at night, on his return from the Louvre. He was carried to the same hotel of Boissq, where his two friends had died. The next morning he died, having received, the previous evening, thirty-four wounds. The Duke of Guise, who was called the Balafre (a word which signifies a dash on the face), was suspected of this assassination, because St. Maigrin had boasted of too great intimacy with the Duchess of Guise. The memoirs of that time assert that the Duke of Mayenne was recognized as one of the assassins, from his broad beard and shoulder-of-mutton fist. The Duke of Guise wife's conduct; and there is no reason for be was not considered as a man very jealous of his lieving that Mayenne, who had never been guilty of a cowardly act, would so far debase himself as to act in concert with a band of twenty assassins to murder a single man. Maugiron after their death, had them shorn, The king kissed St. Maigrin, Quelus, and and kept their light-colored hair. from Quelus the earrings he had attached with his own hands. M. de l'Etoile says these three men died destitute of religion, Mugiron blaspheming, Quelus exclaiming continually, He took my king, my king!" without once mentioning Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary. They were buried at St. Paul's; they erected to their memory three marble tombs, on which there were three figures in the act of kneeling. Their tombs were covered with epitaphs in verse and in Latin and in French. Maugiron was prose, compared to Horatius, Cocles, and Hannibal, because like them he was blind of one eye. Mention is not made here of these epitaphs, which are only found in the antiquities of Paris, printed during the reign of Henry III. There is nothing remarkable or excellent in these monuments. The best is the epitaph of Quelus, "Non injuriam sed mortem patienter tulit." In English," He would not suffer an insult, but with constancy suffered death." 5 That virtuous Bourbon, etc. Henry IV., the hero of this poem, is called indifferently Bourbon, Henry, and the hero. Henry IV., called the Great, was born in 1553, at Pau, a little town, the capital of Bearn. "Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonida sin- Anthony of Bourbon, Duke of Vendorne, his istro, Et poterat forma vincer uterque deos. Parve puer, lumen quod habes, concede puello, Sic tu cocus amor, sic erit illa Venus." Literally translated in English "Acon has lost his right eye, Leonida her left one, And each could conquer the gods in beauty; father, was of the royal blood of France, and the head of the house of Bourbon (which formerly signified bourbeux, that is, in English, muddy), so called from an estate that fell to their house by a marriage with the heiress of Bourbon. The house of Bourbon, from the time of Louis IX. to that of Henry IV., had almost always been neglected and reduced to such a degree of poverty that it is pretended that the famous Prince of Conde, brother of Anthony of Navarre, and uncle of Henry the Great, had only six hundred franes (that is a handred dollars) revenue for his patrimony. The mother of Henry was Jane d'Albret, daughter of Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre, a prince without merit, but a good man, rather indolent than peaceable, who sustained with too much resignation the loss of his kingdom, taken away from his father by a bull of the pope, assisted by the arms of Spain. Jane, the daughter of this weak prince, had a still weaker hasband, to whom she brought in marriage the principality of Bearn, and the empty title of King of Navarre. This prince, who lived in the times of factions and civil war, when firmness of mind is so necessary, exhibited in his conduct only instability and irresolution. He never knew to what party or to what religion he belonged. Without talent for the court, and without capacity for the place of general of the army, he passed his whole life in assisting his enemies and in raining his adherents. The tool of Catharine de Medicis, amused and tyrannized over by the Guises, and always the dupe of himself, he received a fatal wound at the siege of Rouen, where he fought in the cause of his enemies against his own house. He showed at his death the same uneasy and fluctuating spirit that had agitated him in his lifetime. Jane d'Albret was of an entirely different character, full of courage and resolution, dreaded by the court of France, beloved by the Protestants, and respected by both parties. She had all the qualities that constitute a great politician, devoid, however, of the little artifices of intrigue and cabals. It is worthy of remark that she became a Protestant at the same time her husband returned to Catholicism, and was as constant in her religion as Anthony was inconstant in his. Thus it happened she was at the head of one party, while her husbind was the sport of the other. Jealous of her son's education, she charged herself with it. Henry, from his birth, had all the excellent qualities of his mother, and in the sequel carried them to a higher degree of perfection. He had only inherited from his father a certain easiness of disposition, which in Anthony had degenerated into instability and weakness, while in Henry it became benevolence and good-nature. He was not brought up, like a prince, in that base pride and effeminacy which enervate the body, weaken the mind, and harden the heart. His food was coarse, and his dress plain. He always went uncovered. He was sent to school with lads of the same age; he climbed with them the rocks and hills round about, as was the castom of the country. While he was thus brought up in the midst of his subjects, in a kind of equality, without which a prince is apt to forget that he is a man, fortane opened in France a bloody scene, and amidst the wreck of a kingdom almost destroyed, and in the ashes of many princes prematarely dead, he cleared his way to a throne that he could only restore to its original splendor by conquest. Henry IL, King of France, chief of the branch of Valois, was killed in Paris at a tournament, which was the last in Eu rope of those romantic and dangerous diversions. He left four sons, Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., and the Duke of Alencon. All these unworthy descendants successively mounted the throne, except the Duke of Alencon, who fortunately died at an early age and left no issue. The reign of Francis II. was short but remarkable. It was at that period that those factions began, and those calamities succeeded, which for thirty successive years wasted the kingdom of France. He married the celebrated and unfortunate Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, whose weakness and beauty led her to commit great faults, followed by still greater misfortunes, and lastly to a tragic death. She was absolute master of her young husband, a prince of eighteen years, without virtues and without vices, born with a delicate constitution and a weak mind. Incapable of governing alone, she placed herself without reserve in the hands of the Duke of Guise, the brother of her mother. Through her he influenced the mind of the king, and this laid the foundation of the greatness of his own house. It was at this time that Catharine de Medicis, widow of the late king and mother of the reigning king, showed the first symptoms of her ambition, which she had sedulously stifled during the lifetime of Henry II. But seeing that she could not control the mind of her son and a young princess that he tenderly loved, she deemed it more to her advantage to be for some time their instrument, and to use their power to establish her authority, than to oppose them uselessly. Thus the Guises governed the king and the two queens. Masters of the court, they became masters of the kingdom. In France, one is a necessary consequence of the other. 6 Louis, first of Bourbons, etc. St. Louis, the ninth of that name, King of France, is a shoot of the branch of Bourbons. 7 Religion, whose terrible power, etc. Henry IV., King of Navarre, had been solemnly excommunicated by Pope Sextus V., since 1585, three years previous to the events here recorded. The pope, injhis bull, calls him a "bastard and detestable offspring of the house of Bourbon," deprives him and the whole house of Conde of their fiefs and domains, and declares them incapable of succeeding to the throne. Although the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde were in arms at the head of the Protestants, the Parliament was jealous of the honor and dignity of the State, and made the most decided remonstrance against this bull; and Henry IV. caused to be placed in Rome, at the door of the Vatican, a placard, saying that Sextus V., the self-styled pope, had uttered a falsehood, and that he was himself the heretic, |