of passion and his adversaries’ brutal exhibitions of hatred.  As intelligent as she was devoted, she gave him aid in his theological studies and labors as well as in the confronting of public events.  “During this expedition to Fontainebleau, I had remained,” she says, “at Paris, in extreme apprehension, recently recovered from a severe illness, harassed by the deadlock in our domestic affairs.  And, as for all that, I felt it not in comparison with the inevitable mishap of this expedition.  I had found for M. du Plessis all the books of which he might possibly have need, hunted up, with great diligence considering the short time, in the libraries of all our friends, and I got them into his hands, but somewhat late in the day, because it was too late in the day when he gave me the commission.”  The private correspondence of these two noble persons is a fine example of conjugal and Christian union, virtue, and affection.  In 1605, their only son, Philip de Mornay, a very distinguished young man, then twenty-six years of age, obtained Henry IV.’s authority to go and serve in the army of the Prince of Orange, Maurice of Nassau, at deadly war with Spain.  He was killed in it on the 23d of October, at the assault upon the town of Gueldres.  On receiving news of his death, “I have now no son,” said his father; “therefore I have now no wife.”  His sorrowful prediction was no delusion; six mouths after her son’s death Madame de Mornay succumbed, unable any longer to bear the burden she was supporting without a murmur.  Her Memoires concludes with this expression:  “It is but reasonable that this my book should end with him, as it was only undertaken to describe to him our pilgrimage in this life.  And, since it hath pleased God, he hath sooner gone through, and more easily ended his own.  Wherefore, indeed, if I feared not to cause affliction to M. du Plessis, who, the more mine grows upon me, makes me the more clearly perceive his affection, it would vex me extremely to survive him.”

On learning by letter from Prince Maurice that the young man was dead, Henry IV. said, with emotion, to those present, “I have lost the fairest hope of a gentleman in my kingdom.  I am grieved for the father.  I must send and comfort him.  No father but he could have such a loss.”  “He despatched on the instant,” says Madame de Mornay herself, “Sieur Bruneau, one of his secretaries, with very gracious letters to comfort us; with orders, nevertheless, not to present himself unless he were sure that we already knew of it otherwise, not wishing to be the first to tell us such sad news.” [Memoires, t. ii. p. 107.] This touching evidence of a king’s sympathy for a father’s grief effaced, no doubt, to some extent in Mornay’s mind his reminiscences of the conference at Fontainebleau; one thing is quite certain, that he continued to render Henry IV., in the synods and political assemblies of the Protestants, his usual good offices for the maintenance or re-establishment of peace and good understanding between the Catholic king and his malcontent former friends.