attractions. As a matter of ambition, the alliance
was beyond his hopes, and brought him one step nearer
to that throne which, by some extraordinary prescience,
both he and his friends anticipated that he was destined
one day to ascend;[5] but he could not forget that
there were dark suspicions attached to the strange
and sudden death of a mother to whom he had been devoted;
and he felt doubly repugnant to receive a wife from
the very hands which were secretly accused of having
abridged his passage to the sovereignty of Navarre.
Like Marguerite herself, moreover, he was not heart-whole;
and thus he clung to the freedom of an unmarried life,
and would fain have declined the honour which was
pressed upon him; but the wily Catherine, who instantly
perceived his embarrassment, bade him carefully consider
the position in which he stood, and the fearful responsibility
which attached to his decision. Charles IX, in
bestowing upon him the hand of his sister, gave to
the Protestants the most decided and unequivocal proof
of his sincerity. It was evident, she said, that
despite the edict which assured protection to the
Huguenot party, they still misdoubted the good-faith
of the monarch; but when he had also overlooked, or
rather disregarded, the difference of faith so thoroughly
as to give a Princess of France in marriage to one
of their princes, they would no longer have a pretext
for discontent, and the immediate pacification of the
kingdom must be the necessary consequence of such
a concession. The ultimate issue of so unequal
a conflict could not, as she asserted, be for one
moment doubtful; but the struggle might be a bloody
one, and he would do well to remember that the blood
thus spilt would be upon his own head.
Henry then sought, as his mother had previously done,
to create a difficulty by alleging that the difference
of faith between himself and the Princess must tend
to affect the validity of their marriage; but the
wily Italian met this objection by reminding him that
Charles IX had publicly declared that “rather
than that the alliance should not take place, he would
permit his sister to dispense with all the rites and
ceremonies of both religions.”
It is well known that the motive of the French King
in thus urging, or rather insisting upon, a marriage
greatly beneath the pretensions of the Princess, was
simply to attract to Court all the Huguenot leaders,
who, placing little faith in the conciliatory edict,
had resolutely abstained from appearing in the capital;
but Catherine alluded so slightly to this fact that
it awoke no misgivings in the mind of the young monarch.