At about the same time, Philip ii. confidentially offered Henry of Navarre four hundred thousand crowns in hand, and twelve hundred thousand yearly, if he would consent to make war upon Henry iii.  Mucio, or the Duke of Guise, being still in Philip’s pay, the combination of Leaguers and Huguenots against the unfortunate Valois would, it was thought, be a good triangular contest.

But Henry—­no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run barefoot among the cliffs of Coarasse—­was grown too crafty a politician to be entangled by Spanish or Medicean wiles.  The Duke of Anjou was now dead.  Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth, who was its present occupant.  The King of Navarre was legitimate heir to the crown of France.  “Espoir” was now in letters of light upon his shield, but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold dangers, and that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that he could cut his way.  He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and Dauphins, and Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses, of the weavers, cutlers, and artizans, in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns.  It was not Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills, which could bring him to the throne of his ancestors.

And thus he stood the chieftain of that great austere party of Huguenots, the men who went on, their knees before the battle, beating their breasts with their iron gauntlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David, before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.

Their chieftain, scarcely their representative—­fit to lead his Puritans on the battle-field, was hardly a model for them elsewhere.  Yet, though profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other.  In food, wine, and sleep, he was always moderate.  Subtle and crafty in self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his hatred for liars.  Hardly generous perhaps, he was a friend of justice, while economy in a wandering King, like himself, was a necessary virtue, of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action.  Reckless and headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men.  On the religious question, most cautious of all, he always left the door open behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored the Papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction.  Yet prudent as he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life the slave of one woman or another, and it was by good luck rather than by sagacity that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage and conduct, in obedience to his master-passion.