LETTER VII

After this fatal event, which was as unfortunate for France as for me, we went to Lyons to give the meeting to the King of Poland, now Henri III. of France.  The new King was as much governed by Le Guast as ever, and had left this intriguing, mischievous man behind in France to keep his party together.  Through this man’s insinuations he had conceived the most confirmed jealousy of my brother Alencon.  He suspected that I was the bond that connected the King my husband and my brother, and that, to dissolve their union, it would be necessary to create a coolness between me and my husband, and to work up a quarrel of rivalship betwixt them both by means of Madame de Sauves, whom they both visited.  This abominable plot, which proved the source of so much disquietude and unhappiness, as well to my brother as myself, was as artfully conducted as it was wickedly designed.

Many have held that God has great personages more immediately under his protection, and that minds of superior excellence have bestowed on them a good genius, or secret intelligencer, to apprise them of good, or warn them against evil.  Of this number I might reckon the Queen my mother, who has had frequent intimations of the kind; particularly the very night before the tournament which proved so fatal to the King my father, she dreamed that she saw him wounded in the eye, as it really happened; upon which she awoke, and begged him not to run a course that day, but content himself with looking on.  Fate prevented the nation from enjoying so much happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice.  Whenever she lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before her, and would immediately cry out, “God save my children!” well knowing it was the harbinger of the death of some one of them, which melancholy news was sure to be confirmed very shortly after.  During her very dangerous illness at Metz, where she caught a pestilential fever, either from the coal fires, or by visiting some of the nunneries which had been infected, and from which she was restored to health and to the kingdom through the great skill and experience of that modern AEsculapius, M. de Castilian her physician—­I say, during that illness, her bed being surrounded by my brother King Charles, my brother and sister Lorraine, several members of the Council, besides many ladies and princesses, not choosing to quit her, though without hopes of her life, she was heard to cry out, as if she saw the battle of Jarnac:  “There! see how they flee!  My son, follow them to victory!  Ah, my son falls!  O my God, save him!  See there! the Prince de Conde is dead!” All who were present looked upon these words as proceeding from her delirium, as she knew that my brother Anjou was on the point of giving battle, and thought no more of it.  On the night following, M. de Losses brought the news of the battle; and, it being supposed that she would be pleased to hear of it, she was awakened,