The sole occasion upon which he laid aside his morgue, and then to all appearance involuntarily, was while driving through the streets of the capital in the carriage of the King.  He had previously visited Paris, and as he contrasted its present magnificence with the squalor, filth, and disorder which it had formerly exhibited, he could not suppress an exclamation of astonishment.  “Why should you be surprised, Monsieur?” demanded Henry; “when you last saw my good city of Paris, the father of the family did not inhabit it; and now that he is here to watch over his children, they prosper as you see.” [387]

The object of this embassy was kept a profound secret; some historians assert that it was undertaken with a view to effect a marriage between the Dauphin and the Infanta of Spain, while others lean to the belief that Philip had instructed Don Pedro to endeavour to prevail upon Henry to abandon his alliance with the Dutch.  Whatever were its motive, the ambassador, who had reached Paris on the 7th of July, quitted the capital on the 22nd of the same month, having only succeeded in irritating the King by his overbearing and supercilious demeanour.[388]

It would appear that during the present year Henri IV indulged his passion for field sports to such an excess as tended seriously to alarm those who were anxious for his preservation; and it indeed seems as though, at this period, his leisure hours were nearly divided between his two favourite diversions of hunting and high play.  Sully informs us, however, that the King busied himself with the embellishments of Fontainebleau, and in erecting the Place Dauphine at Paris; but adds that these great works, which were necessary to the convenience of the people, might have been carried much further if the monarch would have followed his advice and been less profuse in his personal expenditure, particularly as regarded his gambling transactions.  He advances, as a proof of this assertion, that he was called upon on one occasion to deliver to Eduardo Fernandez, a Portuguese banker (who, according to Bassompierre, had made a visit of speculation to the French Court, and who unhesitatingly provided the nobles with large sums, either on security or at immense interest), the enormous amount of thirty-four thousand pistoles, for which the reckless monarch had become his debtor.  “I frequently received similar orders,” he proceeds to say, “for two or three thousand pistoles, and a great many others for less considerable sums.” [389]

It is scarcely doubtful that the ennui occasioned by the waning passion of Henri IV for Madame de Verneuil at this period induced him, even more than formerly, to seek amusement and occupation at the gaming-table, where he was emulated by his profuse and licentious nobles, while even his Queen and the ladies of the Court entered with avidity into the exciting pastime.  We have frequent record of the habitual high play of Marie de Medicis, who found in it a solace for her sick-room and a diversion from her domestic annoyances, and thus the dangerous propensity of the monarch was heightened by the presence of the loveliest women of the land and the charm and fascination of wit and intellect.