Never had an assassination been more technically successful; yet its results were not commensurate with the monarch’s hopes.  The deed which he had thought premature in May was already too late in December.  His mother denounced his cruelty now, as she had, six months before, execrated his cowardice.  And the old Queen, seeing that her game was played out—­that the cards had all gone against her—­that her son was doomed, and her own influence dissolved in air, felt that there was nothing left for her but to die.  In a week she was dead, and men spoke no more of Catharine de’ Medici, and thought no more of her than if—­in the words of a splenetic contemporary—­“she had been a dead she-goat.”  Paris howled with rage when it learned the murders of Blois, and the sixteen quarters became more furious than ever against the Valois.  Some wild talk there was of democracy and republicanism after the manner of Switzerland, and of dividing France into cantons—­and there was an earnest desire on the part of every grandee, every general, every soldier of fortune, to carve out a portion of French territory with his sword, and to appropriate it for himself and his heirs.  Disintegration was making rapid progress, and the epoch of the last Valois seemed mare dark and barbarous than the times of the degenerate Carlovingians had been.  The letter-writer of the Escorial, who had earnestly warned his faithful Mucio, week after week, that dangers were impending over him, and that “some trick would be played upon him,” should he venture into the royal presence, now acquiesced in his assassination, and placidly busied himself with fresh combinations and newer tools.

Baked, hunted, scorned by all beside, the luckless Henry now threw himself into the arms of the Bearnese—­the man who could and would have protected him long before, had the King been capable of understanding their relative positions and his own true interests.  Could the Valois have conceived the thought of religious toleration, his throne even then might have been safe.  But he preferred playing the game of the priests and bigots, who execrated his name and were bent upon his destruction.  At last, at Plessis les Tours, the Bearnese, in his shabby old chamois jacket and his well-dinted cuirass took the silken Henry in his arms, and the two—­the hero and the fribble—­swearing eternal friendship, proceeded to besiege Paris.  A few weeks later, the dagger of Jacques Clement put an end for ever to, the line of Valois.  Luckless Henry iii. slept with his forefathers, and Henry of Bourbon and Navarre proclaimed himself King of France.  Catharine and her four sons had all past away at last, and it would be a daring and a dexterous schemer who should now tear the crown, for which he had so long and so patiently waited, from the iron grasp of the Bearnese.  Philip had a more difficult game than ever to play in France.  It would be hard for him to make valid the claims of the Infanta and any husband he might select for her to the crown of her grandfather Henry ii.  It seemed simple enough for him, while waiting the course of events, to set up a royal effigy before the world in the shape of an effete old Cardinal Bourbon, to pour oil upon its head and to baptize it Charles X.; but meantime the other Bourbon was no effigy, and he called himself Henry iv.