of the chamber in which the King of Navarre slept.  “La Force,” said D’Aubigne to his bed-fellow, “our master is a regular miser, and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth.”  “What dost say, D’Aubigne?” asked La Force, half asleep.  “He says,” repeated the King of Navarre, who had heard all, that I am a regular miser, and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth.”  D’Aubigne, somewhat disconcerted, was mum.  “But,” he adds, “when daylight appeared, this prince, who liked neither rewarding nor punishing, did not for all that look any the more black at me, or give me a quarter-crown more.”  Thirty years later, in 1617, after the collapse of the League and after the reign of Henry IV., D’Aubigne, wishing to describe the two leaders of the two great parties, sums them up in these terms:  “The Duke of Mayenne had such probity as is human, a good nature and a liberality which made him most pleasant to those about him; his was a judicious mind, which made good use of experience, took the measure of everything by the card; a courage rather steady than dashing; take him for all in all, he might be called an excellent captain.  King Henry IV. had all this, save the liberality; but to make up for that item, his rank caused expectations as to the future to blossom, which made the hardships of the present go down.  He had, amongst his points of superiority to the Duke of Mayenne, a marvellous gift of promptitude and vivacity, and far beyond the average.  We have seen him, a thousand times in his life, make pat replies without hearing the purport of a request, and forestall questions without committing himself.  The Duke of Mayenne was incommoded by his great bodily bulk, which could not support the burden either of arms or of fatigue duty.  The other, having worked all his men to a stand-still, would send for hounds and horses for to begin a hunt; and when his horses could go no farther, he would run down the game afoot.  The former communicated his heaviness and his maladies to his army, undertaking no enterprise that he could not support in person; the other communicated his own liveliness to those about him, and his captains imitated him from complaisance and from emulation.”

[Illustration:  GABRIELLE D’ESTREES—­130]

These politicians, these Christians, these warriors had, in 1600, a grave question to solve for Henry IV., and grave counsel to give him.  He was anxious to separate from his wife, Marguerite de Valois, who had, in fact, been separated from him for the last fifteen years, was leading a very irregular life, and had not brought him any children.  But, in order to obtain from the pope annulment of the marriage, it was first necessary that Marguerite should consent to it, and at no price would she consent so long as the king’s favorite continued to be Gabrielle d’Estrees, whom she detested, and by whom Henry already had several children.  The question arose in in 1598, in connection with a son lately born to