kind to his old servants; and Rosny himself was discontented naturally enough with seeing the cities he had himself won given to others, a conduct he afterwards severely reprobates in himself.

The historian slightly touches upon that passion of Henry for the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrées, which has been so often the subject of poets and romance writers, but was little likely to engage the attention of the austere financier, any more than the hardy besieger: we find, however, that this year (1592) our author took time to marry again, and his second choice appears not less happy than his first. We find at this period, Henry took the only effectual way of sitting easy on his throne, and rendering his past conquests secure a way which even the Huguenots themselves thought adviseable in the state to which the kingdom was reduced. This was by renouncing his religion, and entering the pale of the Catholic church, a mode of conduct which Sully himself strongly advised, as a duty which circumstances imposed upon a king, on whom the tranquillity of so large a portion of people depended. The king's abjuration was followed with the happiest effects; for we find, in the course of this year, he was received in Paris, numerous cities surrendered to him, and his accession of power enabled him to subdue others. Every where his moderation in victory, his forgetfulness of past injuries, the generosity of his nature, and the sweetness of his temper, are not less conspicuous than the valour, patience, and perseverance, he had displayed; and the ingenuousness of his nature was equal to his other good qualities. This openness of temper was, generally speaking, still more conspicuous in his minister; but, at this time, we find him put upon a piece of dissimulation in the parting two lovers, which he relates with all the just embarrassment which belongs to a naturally honest heart forced into the crooked paths of a courtier: but we cannot garble the account, and must therefore pass it over, being desirous to see this great prince placed firmÎy on a throne, for which he had fought so bravely, and which he filled so nobly. We offer one short extract.

"The next day a prodigious concourse of the populace of Paris assembled at St. Denis. The king showed himself to the people, assisted publicly at mass; wherever he turned his steps, the crowd was so great, that it was sometimes impossible to pierce through them:

6

*« ‹ They are wild,' said Henry, to see a king.' Etoile, ibid. In a letter which he wrote to Mademoiselle D'Estrées upon this or some other such occasion, he says, ' A pleasant adventure happened to me at church: an old woman of 80 years of age seized, me by the head and kissed me: I was not the first who laughed at it; to

at the same moment, a million of voices cried, ' Long live the king.' Every one returned, charmed with the gracefulness of his person, his condescension, and that popular air which was natural to him.-' God bless him,' said they, with tears in their eyes, and grant that he may soon do the same in our church of Notre Dame in Paris.' I observed to the king this disposition of the people with regard to him; tender and sensible as he was, he could not behold this spectacle without a strong emotion."

War still continued; and private as well as public enemies harassed the king, whose life was attempted in the following

manner.

"On the 26th of December, the king being then at Paris, in his apartments in the Louvre, where he gave audience to Messieurs de Ragny and de Montigny, who entered with a great number of other persons; at the very moment when he stooped to embrace one of them, he received a wound in the face with a knife, which the murderer let fall as he was endeavouring to escape through the crowd. I was present, and approached in an agony of grief, seeing the king all covered with blood, and fearing, with reason, that the stroke was mortal. The king removed our apprehensions by a composed and agreeable behaviour: and we perceived immediately that his lip only was wounded; the stroke having been aimed too high, the force of it was stopped by a tooth, which it broke.

"The parricide was discovered, without any difficulty, though he had mixed among the crowd. He was a scholar, named John Chatel; and readily answered, when he was interrogated, that he came from the college of the Jesuits, accusing those fathers with being the authors of his crime. The king, who heard him, said, with a gaiety, which, on such an occasion, few persons could have been capable of, that he had heard from the mouths of many persons, that the society never loved him, and he was now convinced of it by his own. Chatel was delivered up to justice; and the prosecutions against the Jesuits, which had been suspended, were now resumed more vigorously than before, and terminated by the banishment of the whole order from the kingdom."

Rosny begins now to examine the state of the finances, and to expose the dreadful abuses, which in the late confusion of the times had crept into every branch of the revenue; on which subject we shall only give the following passage.

"The following fact I had from the king himself.-Very considerable arrears were due from the royal treasury to the Swiss soldiers, German horse, and other foreigners in the French pay. The

morrow you shall sweeten my mouth.'-Recueil des Lettres d'Henry le Grand,"

council suborned a man, named Otoplote, who gave the receivers deputed by these foreigners to understand, that they must never expect to be paid, unless they consented to reduce their demands to such a moderate sum as could be given them, without draining the exchequer. The reduction was agreed to; but the gentlemen of the council charged the whole sum to the king's account, and by this means robbed his majesty, or rather the lawful creditors, of the overplus.

،، To this, many other frauds of the same kind may be added. These gentlemen revelled in luxury, while the king and his household wanted necessaries. A few days after that on which his majesty wrote to me, he sent to inform them that he had occasion for eight hundred thousand crowns, for an enterprise of great importance, (the siege of Arras); he entreated, he conjured them to let him have this sum, but in vain; all the answer he could get was, that so far from being able to furnish him with what he demanded, they knew not how to supply the expenses of his household. It is, indeed, curious to see how this household was supported. I am,' says this amiable and worthy prince, in a letter to me, very near my enemies, and hardly a horse to carry me into the battle, nor a complete suit of armour to put on; my shirts are all ragged, my doublets out at elbow, my kettle is seldom on the fire, and these two last days I have been obliged to dine where I could, for my purveyors have informed me, that they have not wherewithal to furnish my table.' Those belonging to the gentlemen of the council were better provided. Henry, in his letter, deplored these monstrous abuses, less on his own account than on his people's, whom, he said, he looked upon as his children, since heaven had given him no others, and proposed to me the design of assembling the states of the kingdom, to consider of a remedy for all these misdemeanors."

Our author now mentions Madame de Liancourt (the fair Gabrielle) as "having attended her litter when she was in danger," but he rests as short a time as possible on the subject, having, indeed, little success in the service of the ladies, as we soon find that his affair with the king's sister, which we alluded to, brought him at last only the anger of the king, whose wishes he had fulfilled.

"I was overwhelmed, I confess, with this unexpected blow, and so much the more, as, having no reason to imagine that the king had not received my letter, I saw that it was after he had read it that I was thus treated. What reflections did I not then make upon the misfortune of being employed in settling the differences of persons of such rank, and the danger of serving kings. I had nothing to reproach myself with, in regard to Henry; I had served him four-andtwenty years with an unwearied assiduity, and a zeal that nothing could allay: it was with reluctance that I accepted this last disagreeable commission: the writing which I had obtained of the king contained many things much more severe than any I had said to the princess; and I had suppressed them at a time when it would, per

haps, have been excusable to have aggravated them. My guilt was, at most, a too faithful obedience; yet his majesty sacrificed me cruelly, without any regard to my reasons, or his own express commands. I was sensibly affected with this injustice, and all my thoughts ran upon forming strong resolutions to quit the court for

ever.

"But scarce had I taken these resolutions, when a thousand motives concurred to make me change them. Henry, as I had already often proved, had acquired such an empire over my will, that after repeated oaths on my side to quit him, a single word from him has drawn me to him as it were by enchantment. To this was added the consideration of my own interest: by listening to my resentment, I was exposing myself to lose the rewards of my long services, when I was just upon the point of obtaining them, and at a time when, being disinherited by the Viscount de Gand, I lost an estate of fifty thousand livres a-year; exhausted by a long and painful service, having a house to establish, and menaced with a numerous family by the fertility of my wife, these expected rewards were all my resource, and the only foundation I had to build upon. But, on the other side, how could I endure to suffer, like a criminal, the haughty and contemptuous behaviour of a princess, with whom I had just before maintained a character so different, and who would make this cup as bitter for me as she was able? The agitation and grief of my mind may be easily imagined."

The tenth book, commencing in 1598, opens at length with a prospect of peace, the disbanding of the army, and those cares which belong to the restoration of a long harassed country. Gabrielle, now raised to be Dutchess of Beaufort, and more than ever the object of Henry's tenderness, endeavours to prevail on the monarch to make her his queen; a consummation of her greatness opposed in the warmest and firmest manner by Rosny, who, although he sincerely wished Henry to marry, and even took steps to expedite a divorce from his first queen (Margaret, the daughter of Catherine, from whom he had many years separated), yet could not bear to think of his marriage with his mistress. The devoted servant, firm to his purpose, and faithful to the honour of his master, drew upon him all the anger of the offended beauty, and the courtiers fully expected the downfall of one whose manners were their aversion, and whose virtue was their reproach; but we learn:

"The king continuing to converse with me apart, told me, that he did not doubt but that Madam De Beaufort was greatly enraged against me, and advised me to go to her, and endeavour, by solid reasons, to give her satisfaction: If that will not do,' added he, I will speak to her as her master.'

"I went directly to the duchess's apartment, which was in the cloister of Saint Germain. I knew not what notion she conceived of a visit which she found I began with a sort of explanation; she did

not allow me time to go on: the rage with which she was animated not permitting her to observe any measures, she interrupted me with a reproach that I had imposed upon the king, and made him believe that black was white. 6 'Tis well, madam!' said I, interrupting her in my turn, but with great calmness, since you think fit to talk in this manner, I shall take my leave, but I shall not, however, neglect to do my duty. Saying this, I left her, not being willing to hear more, that I might not be tempted to say any thing more severe. put the king in a very ill humour with his mistress, when I repeated to him what she had said. • Come along with me,' said the king, with an emotion that pleased me greatly, and I will let you see that women do not wholly possess me.' His coach not being ready soon enough for his impatience, his majesty got into mine: and as we drove to the duchess's lodgings, he assured me that he would never have cause to reproach himself, that, through his complaisance for a woman, he had banished or even disgusted servants, that, like me, were only solicitous for his glory and interest.

"Madam de Beaufort, upon my leaving her apartment so hastily, had expected to see the king soon after: and during that time had taken sufficient pains to prepare herself; believing, like me, that the victory which one or other of us was to gain, would be the happy or miserable presage of our fortune. As soon as she was informed of the king's arrival, she came as far as the door of the first hall to receive him. Henry, without saluting her, or showing any part of his usual tenderness, Let us go, madam,' said he, to your chamber, and suffer no one to enter but yourself, Rosny, and me; for I want to talk to you both, and make you live together upon friendly terms.' Then ordering the door to be shut, and examining whether any one remained in the chamber, wardrobe, or closet, he took her hand, holding one of mine at the same time, and with an air that she had good reason to be surprised at, told her, that the true motive which had determined him to attach himself to her, was the gentleness he had observed in her disposition; but that her conduct for some time past had convinced him, that what he had believed to be real was only dissembled, and that she had deceived him: he reproached her with the bad counsels she had listened to, and the very considerable faults they had occasioned. He covered me with praises, to show the duchess, by the difference of our proceedings, that I only was truly attached to his person: he commanded her to get so far the better of her aversion for me, as to be able to regulate her conduct by my advice, since, she might depend upon it, his passion for her should never induce him to banish me from his presence.

"Madam de Beaufort began her answer by sighs and tears; she assumed a tender and submissive air; she would have kissed the hand of Henry; omitting no artifice which she thought capable of melting his heart. It was not till she had played over all these little arts, that she began to speak, which she did by complaining, that instead of those returns she might have expected from a prince to whom she had given her heart, she saw herself sacrificed to one of his grooms: she recalled all that I had said or done against her children,