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Francis I. had made choice one, Frances de Foix, countess of Chateaubriant, beautiful ambitious, dexterous, haughty, readily venturing upon rivalry with even the powerful queen-mother. She had three brothers; Lautrec was one of the three, and she supported him in all his pretensions and all his trials of fortune.

Two men, whom Charles IX. loved sufficiently to protect under circumstances of great danger, Jean Chapelain, his physician, whom he saved from the Saint-Bartholomew, and Ambroise Pare, with whom he went to dine when Pare's enemies were accusing him of intending to poison the king, had arrived this evening in haste from the provinces, recalled by the queen-mother.

However, my half-brother heard of it in time, and my mother had flown to Queen Henrietta, who took her to the Queen-Regent, and together they had made such representations of my youth, folly, and inexperience that the Queen-Mother, who had a fellow-feeling for a young widow and her son, and at last consented to do nothing worse than summon me and my child to Paris, where my mother and her Queen answered for me that I should live quietly, and give no more umbrage to the authorities; and my brother De Solivet had been sent off to fetch me!

The mournful train then proceeded towards England, by Bayonne and Paris, where they arrived on the 30th of October. After an audience of the Queen-Mother, Lady Fanshawe set out for Calais; and on the 2nd of November was conveyed to the Tower Wharf in a French vessel-of-war.

The Duke of Alencon and the King of Navarre had been detected, it was said, in a conspiracy for overthrowing the power of the Queen-mother, bringing in the Huguenots, and securing the crown to Alencon on the King's death.

It being his fate to be imprisoned by Mazarin, first at Vincennes and then at Nantes, he made his escape to Rome, and in 1656 retired to Franche Comte, where Cardinal Mazarin gave orders for his being arrested; upon which he posted to Switzerland, and thence to Constance, Strasburg, Ulm, Augsburg, Frankfort, and Cologne, to which latter place Mazarin sent men to take him dead or alive; whereupon he retired to Holland, and made a trip from one town to another till 1661, when, Cardinal Mazarin dying, our Cardinal went as far as Valenciennes on his way to Paris, but was not suffered to come further; for the King and Queen-mother would not be satisfied without his resignation of the archbishopric of Paris, to which he at last submitted upon advantageous terms for himself and an amnesty for all his adherents.

Said the Great Saint: "And who are all those whom the Queen-Mother has invited?" They answered: "All the gods and saints in the Heavens, on the earth and under the earth." "Has she also invited me?" said the Saint. "Not that we know of," said the fairies. Then the Saint grew angry, murmured a magic incantation and said: "Stay! Stay! Stay!" With that the seven fairies were banned to the spot.

He disguised himself as a pauper, at the risk of being taken for a spy, and by means of this travesty, he mingled with the crowd of beggars which lined the roadway. After the departure of the Prince de Conde, and the execution of the leaders, the duke and cardinal thought they had sufficiently silenced the Reformers to allow the queen-mother a little more freedom.

The Balafre hesitated, but the populace raved and roared for its darling. The Queen-Mother urged her unhappy son to yield his consent, and the Montpensier fatal sister of Guise, with the famous scissors ever at her girdle insisted that her brother had as good a right as any man to come to the city.

This style of harmony pleased the queen-mother exceedingly, but it was not perhaps so agreeable to the young princess, who was an incarnation of coquetry, and who, without any fear as far as her own voice was concerned, sought opportunities of so perilously distinguishing herself.