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Madame de Nevers, whose oddities you well know, attended the Cardinal de Bourbon, Madame de Guise, the Princesse de Conde, her sisters, and myself to the late Queen of Navarre's apartments, whither we all went to pay those last duties which her rank and our nearness of blood demanded of us.
It is probable that, if he could have chosen, he would have preferred those of Henry de Bourbon; if they caused him like jealousy, they did not raise in him the same distrust; he knew the King of Navarre's loyalty, and did not suspect him of aiming to become, whilst he himself was living, King of France. Besides, he considered the Protestants less powerful and less formidable than the Leaguers.
He had personal enemies too, such as the Duchess of Montpensier, sister to Henry of Guise, who was fond of saying that she would give him another crown by using the gold scissors at her waist. There was some talk of his entering a monastery where he would have had to adopt the tonsure. One-half of Navarre's beard had turned white when he heard that Henry III was revoking the Edicts of Toleration.
"My master," was ever Guise's address to Henry; "my gossip," the young King of Navarre's reply. But the crafty Bearnese had made use of the intimacy only to read the secrets of the Balafre's heart; and on Navarre's flight from the court, and his return to Huguenotism, Guise knew that he had been played upon by a subtler spirit than his own.
It was a favourable moment, for the main body of the murderers were at that time being poster in the court by the captain of the guard, ready to massacre the gentlemen of the King of Navarre's suite, and he was therefore unmolested by any claimant of the plunders of the apparent corpse he bore on his shoulders.
The Maréchal de Biron and the Duc de Longueville fought prominently on Navarre's side. The Duc de Mayenne, brother of Henry of Guise, fought on the opposite side. The Duc d'Alençon long a suitor for the hand of Queen Elizabeth, is mentioned as the father of Rosaline. Another veiled reference to a Russian suitor of the Queen's seems to be made in the incident introduced in the last Act.
Thus a separate Catholic party arose, which, maintaining the divine appointment of princes, restricted the intervention of the church to spiritual affairs, and in France supported Navarre's claim to the throne; while, on the other hand, Philip and the Spaniards, strongly interested in preventing his succession, were ready to maintain, even against a fluctuating pope, that heresy was a permanent bar to succession, not to be removed even by recantation.
"And so I will, if you're civil. In the first place, there was the question of M. le Comte's marriage." "What! is he married?" "Oh, by no means. Monsieur wouldn't have it. You see, Félix," Marcel said in a tone deep with importance, "we're Navarre's men now." "Of course," said I. "I suppose you would say 'of course' just like that to Mayenne himself. You greenhorn!
Madame de Nevers, whose oddities you well know, attended the Cardinal de Bourbon, Madame de Guise, the Princesse de Conde, her sisters, and myself to the late Queen of Navarre's apartments, whither we all went to pay those last duties which her rank and our nearness of blood demanded of us.
We, too, are well content with the queen of Navarre's generosity; for her steward gave us, before we started, each a purse of twenty crowns, which has been a wonderful salve to our sore feet. I trust there will be no more occasion to use them, for a time." "I hope not.
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