A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace revolutions, enveloped him.  Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies, assassinations and poisonings; all the state-machinery which worked so exquisitely in fair ladies’ chambers, to spread havoc and desolation over a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes.  Now campaigning with one royal brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their side, now solicited by the Queen-Mother to attempt the life of her son, now implored by Henry iii. to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh antagonisms, affinities; combinations, were developed, detected, neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medicean state-chemistry.  Charles ix. in his grave, Henry iii. on the throne, Alencon in the Huguenot camp—­Henry at last made his escape.  The brief war and peace of Monsieur succeeded, and the King of Navarre formally abjured the Catholic creed.  The parties were now sharply defined.  Guise mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were prepared to do battle to the death.  The temporary “war of the amorous” was followed by the peace of Fleix.

Four years of peace again; four fat years of wantonness and riot preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.  The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau.  Henry’s Spartan grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale.  For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother’s lessons.  A seraglio of maids of honour ministered to Henry’s pleasures, and were carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were playthings in their hands.  While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking in a poisonous marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the Bearnese would be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he lived.

The unhappy Henry iii., baited by the Guises, worried by Alencon and his mother, implored the King of Navarre to return to Paris and the Catholic faith.  M. de Segur, chief of Navarre’s council, who had been won over during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery that “Henry iii. was an angel, and his ministers devils,” came back to Pau, urging his master’s acceptance of the royal invitation.  Henry wavered.  Bold D’Aubigne, stanchest of Huguenots, and of his friends, next day privately showed Segur a palace-window opening on a very steep precipice over the Bayae, and cheerfully assured him that he should be flung from it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings, and give his master different advice.  If I am not able to do the deed myself, said D’Aubigne, here are a dozen more to help me.  The chief of the council cast a glance behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with their hats plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made his bow, and quite changed his line of conduct.