at the court of France,” she set out for Blois, where Charles IX. received her most affectionately, calling her my good aunt, my dear aunt, and lavishing upon her promises as well as endearments.  Jeanne was a strict and a judicious person; and the manners and proceedings of the court at Blois displeased her.  On the 8th of March, 1572, she wrote to her son, “I find it necessary to negotiate quite contrariwise to what I had expected and what had been promised me; I have no liberty to speak to the king or my Lady Marguerite, only to the queen-mother, who treats me as if I were dirt. . . .  Seeing, then, that no advance is made, and that the desire is to make me hurry matters, and not conduct them orderly, I have thrice spoken thereof to the queen, who does nothing but make a fool of me, and tell everybody the opposite of what I told her; in such sort that my friends find fault with me, and I know not how to bring her to book, for when I say to her, ’Madame, it is reported that I said so-and-so to you,’ though it was she herself who reported it, she denies it flatly, and laughs in my face, and uses me in such wise that you might really say that my patience passes that of Griselda. . . .  Thenceforward I have a troop of Huguenots, who come to converse with me, rather for the purpose of being spies upon me than of assisting me.  Then I have some of another humor, who hamper me no less, and who are religious hermaphrodites.  I defend myself as best I may. . .  I am sure that if you only knew the trouble I am in, you would have pity upon me, for they give me empty speeches and raillery instead of treating with me gravely, as the matter deserves; in such sort that I am bursting, because I am so resolved not to lose my temper that my patience is a miracle to see. . . .  I found your letter very much to my taste; I will show, it to my Lady Marguerite if I can.  She is beautiful, and discreet, and of good demeanor, but brought up in the most accursed and most corrupt society that ever was.  I would not, for anything in the world, have you here to remain here.  That is why I desire to get you married, and you and your wife withdraw from this corruption; for though I believed it to be very great, I find it still more so.  Here it is not the men who solicit the women; it is the women who solicit the men.  If you were here, you would never escape without a great deal of God’s grace.”

[Illustration:  Admiral Gaspard de Coligny——­346]

Side by side with this motherly and Christianly scrupulous negotiation, Coligny set on foot another, noble and dignified also, but even less in harmony with the habits and bent of the government which it concerned.  The puritan warrior was at the same time an ardent patriot:  he had at heart the greatness of France as much as he had his personal creed; the reverses of Francis I. and the preponderance of Spain in Europe oppressed his spirit with a sense of national decadence, from which he wanted France to lift herself up again.