Henri iii, exasperated by the departure of the three Princes, declared his determination to revenge the affront upon Marguerite, who had not been enabled to accompany her husband; but the representations of the Queen-mother induced him to forego this ungenerous project, and he was driven to satiate his thirst for vengeance upon her favourite attendant, Mademoiselle de Torigni,[10] of whose services he had already deprived her, on the pretext that so young a Princess should not be permitted to retain about her person such persons as were likely to exert an undue influence over her mind, and to possess themselves of her secrets.  In the first paroxysm of his rage, he even sentenced this lady to be drowned; nor is it doubtful that this iniquitous and unfounded sentence would have been really carried into effect, had not the unfortunate woman succeeded in making her escape through the agency of two individuals who were about to rejoin the Duc d’Alencon, and who conducted her safely to Champagne.[11]

One of the first acts of Henry of Navarre on reaching his own dominions had been to protest against the enforced abjuration to which he was compelled on the fatal night of St. Bartholomew, and to evince his sincerity by resuming the practices of the reformed faith, a recantation which so exasperated the French King that he made Marguerite a close prisoner in her own apartments, under the pretext that she was leagued with the enemies of the state against the church and throne of her ancestors.  Nor would he listen to her entreaties that she might be permitted to follow her husband, declaring that “she should not live with a heretic”; and thus her days passed on in a gloomy and cheerless monotony, ill suited to her excitable temperament and splendid tastes.  Meanwhile, the Duc d’Alencon, weary of his voluntary exile, and hopeless of any successful result to the disaffection in which he had so long indulged, became anxious to effect a reconciliation with the King; and for this purpose he addressed himself to Marguerite, to whom he explained the conditions upon which he was willing to return to his allegiance, giving her full power to treat in his name.  Henri iii, who, on his side, was no less desirous to detach his brother from the Protestant cause, acceded to all his demands, among which was the immediate liberation of the Princess; and thus she at length found herself enabled to quit her regal prison and to rejoin her royal husband at Bearn.

During the space of five years the ill-assorted couple maintained at least a semblance of harmony, for each apparently regarded very philosophically those delicate questions which occasionally conduce to considerable discord in married life.  The personal habits of Henry, combined with his sense of gratitude to his wife for her refusal to abandon him to the virulence of her mother’s hatred, induced him to close his eyes to her moral delinquencies, while Marguerite, in her turn, with equal complacency, affected a like