and Protestantism.  The political expediency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent in proportion as the religious war had become more direful and the desire for peace more general.  Charles IX. embraced the idea passionately.  At the outset he encountered an obstacle.  The young Duke of Guise had already paid court to Marguerite, and had obtained such marked favor with her that the ambassador of Spain wrote to the king, “There is no public topic in France just now save the marriage of my Lady Marguerite with the Duke of Guise.”  People even talked of a tender correspondence between the princess and the duke, which was carried on through one of the queen’s ladies, the Countess of Mirandola, who was devoted to the Guises and a favorite with Marguerite.  “If it be so,” said Charles IX., savagely, “we will kill him;” and he gave such peremptory orders on this subject, that Henry de Guise, somewhat disquieted, avoided for a while taking part in the royal hunts, and thought it well that there should be resumed on his behalf a project of marriage with Catherine of Cleves, widow of the Prince of Portien (Le Porcien) and the wealthy heiress to some great domains, especially the countship of Eu.  So long as he had some hope of marrying Marguerite de Valois, the Duke of Guise had repudiated, not without offensiveness, all idea of union with Catherine of Cleves.  “Anybody who can make me marry the Princess of Portien,” said he, “could make me marry a negress.”  He, nevertheless, contracted this marriage, so greatly disdained, on the 4th of October, 1570; and at this price recovered the good graces of Charles IX.  The queen-mother charged the Cardinal Louis de Lorraine, him whom the people called Cardinal Bottles (from his conviviality), to publicly give the lie to any rumor of a possible engagement between her daughter Marguerite and Henry de Guise; and a grand council of the kings, after three holdings, adopted in principle the marriage of Marguerite de Valois with “the little Prince of Bearn.”

Charles IX. at once set his hand to the work to turn this resolution to good account, being the only means, he said, of putting a stop at last to this incessantly renewed civil war, which was the plague of his life as well as of his kingdom.  He first of all sent Marshal de Cosse to La Rochelle, to sound Coligny as to his feelings upon this subject, and to urge him to thus cut short public woes and the Reformers’ grievances.  “The king has always desired peace,” said the marshal; “he wishes it to be lasting; he has proved only too well, to his own misery and that of his people, that of all the evils which can afflict a state, the most direful is civil war.  But what means this withdrawal, since the signing of peace at St. Germain, of the Queen of Navarre and her children, of the Prince of Conde, and so many lords and distinguished nobles, still separated from their houses and their families, and collected together in a town like Rochelle, which