United States or Switzerland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'At the inn at Etampes, where M. de Crillon would have fought me. He was visibly taken aback. 'Are you that man? he cried. 'I am. But I am not here to prate of myself, I replied. And with that the remembrance of my neglected errand flashing on me again I staggered to the King of Navarre's side, and, falling on my knees, seized his stirrup.
On her father's side she was sprung from that great warrior, Jacques d'Azay, who fought side by side with Lafayette's ancestor in the battle of Beaugé, when the brother of Harry of England was defeated and slain. On her mother's side she came of the race of the wise and powerful Duc de Sully, Henry of Navarre's able minister.
In addition to these peculiarities, Navarre was lame of the right leg, a boar having one day kindly applied his tusky lancet to his thigh, and gored him seriously, before, hand to hand, he managed to finish him with his hunting-knife. At the first glance, Navarre's aspect appeared strange and forbidding, and savage as the locality in which he lived.
Towards eleven o'clock at night Marcel, followed by his people armed from head to foot, made his way to the St. Anthony gate, holding in his hands, it is said, the keys of the city. Whilst he was there, waiting for the arrival of the King of Navarre's men, Maillart came up "with torches and lanterns and a numerous assemblage.
I addressed her formally and upon formal topics only, such, I mean, as we shared with the rest of our company; and I reminded myself often that though we now met in the same house and at the same table, she was still the Mademoiselle de la Vire who had borne herself so loftily in the King of Navarre's ante-chamber.
So soon as she had heard the description of the King of Navarre's entry into Paris that afternoon, and the old gentleman's lamentation that his own two nephews were among the three hundred Huguenot gentleman who had formed the escort, she had only to observe whether his reminiscences had gone to Italy or to Flanders in order to be able to put in the appropriate remarks at each pause, while she listened all the while to the murmurs behind the curtain.
"I will tell him that your Majesty wants him." Meanwhile up came a gentleman at a gallop, who said three or four words in the King of Navarre's ear. "My friend," said Henry to Rosny, "the king has just been wounded with a knife in the stomach; let us go and see about it; come with me." Henry took with him five and twenty gentlemen.
The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered coldly: "I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal." "Better his than Spain's." Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest. "Well, I am no astrologer to read the future." Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder. "But I read it, my friend.
One proposes a league with the Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his account in it, and that he ought to communicate counsels with them, and give them some share of the spoil till his success makes him need or fear them less, and then it will be easily taken out of their hands; another proposes the hiring the Germans and the securing the Switzers by pensions; another proposes the gaining the Emperor by money, which is omnipotent with him; another proposes a peace with the King of Arragon, and, in order to cement it, the yielding up the King of Navarre's pretensions; another thinks that the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on by the hope of an alliance, and that some of his courtiers are to be gained to the French faction by pensions.
But it is Navarre's loss, not mine. It is his loss. And I hope to Heaven it may be yours too! he added fiercely. There was so much in what he said that I bent before the storm, and accepted with humility blame which was as natural on his part as it was undeserved on mine. Indeed I could not wonder at his Majesty's anger; nor should I have wondered at it in a greater man.
Word Of The Day