A few months after the Queen’s death, the Prince of Navarre, or rather, as he was then styled, the King, came to Paris in deep mourning, attended by eight hundred gentlemen, all in mourning habits.  He was received with every honour by King Charles and the whole Court, and, in a few days after his arrival, our marriage was solemnised with all possible magnificence; the King of Navarre and his retinue putting off their mourning and dressing themselves in the most costly manner.  The whole Court, too, was richly attired; all which you can better conceive than I am able to express.  For my own part, I was set out in a most royal manner; I wore a crown on my head with the coet, or regal close gown of ermine, and I blazed in diamonds.  My blue-coloured robe had a train to it of four ells in length, which was supported by three princesses.  A platform had been raised, some height from the ground, which led from the Bishop’s palace to the Church of Notre-Dame.  It was hung with cloth of gold; and below it stood the people in throngs to view the procession, stifling with heat.  We were received at the church door by the Cardinal de Bourbon, who officiated for that day, and pronounced the nuptial benediction.  After this we proceeded on the same platform to the tribune which separates the nave from the choir, where was a double staircase, one leading into the choir, the other through the nave to the church door.  The King of Navarre passed by the latter and went out of church.

But fortune, which is ever changing, did not fail soon to disturb the felicity of this union.  This was occasioned by the wound received by the Admiral, which had wrought the Huguenots up to a degree of desperation.  The Queen my mother was reproached on that account in such terms by the elder Pardaillan and some other principal Huguenots, that she began to apprehend some evil design.  M. de Guise and my brother the King of Poland, since Henri III. of France, gave it as their advice to be beforehand with the Huguenots.  King Charles was of a contrary opinion.  He had a great esteem for M. de La Rochefoucauld, Teligny, La Noue, and some other leading men of the same religion; and, as I have since heard him say, it was with the greatest difficulty he could be prevailed upon to give his consent, and not before he had been made to understand that his own life and the safety of his kingdom depended upon it.

The King having learned that Maurevel had made an attempt upon the Admiral’s life, by firing a pistol at him through a window,—­in which attempt he failed, having wounded the Admiral only in the shoulder,—­and supposing that Maurevel had done this at the instance of M. de Guise, to revenge the death of his father, whom the Admiral had caused to be killed in the same manner by Poltrot, he was so much incensed against M. de Guise that he declared with an oath that he would make an example of him; and, indeed, the King would have put M. de Guise under an arrest, if he had not kept out of his sight the