the palace, with a great retinue of lords and gentlemen, when the priests immediately quitted the altars, without finishing the masses they had begun, and retreated from them as excommunicated persons. This decided Don Cæsar to send the Duchess d'Urbino to treat with the legate; and, accordingly, the next day, the young band of Frenchmen took leave of him and went each his own way.

Passing through Padua, (where he and his brother fell in love with the daughter of the German consul, and quarrelled, so that they did not speak for many days,) Venice, Mantua, Pavia, Genoa, and Milan, they returned through Switzerland into Lorraine. In the autumn of 1598, Bassompierre, accompanied by his mother and all his family, went to Paris, to be presented to the king. The introduction was delayed by the king's illness. He made one of a party, who danced in a balét before the king, at Monceaux. The compliment seems to us of a singular kind: "It represented," says he, "barbers,. with a view, I think, of ridiculing the king, who had put himself into the hands of men of that trade for a wen he had, which they undertook to cure." The good-natured king was pleased, however, and, when it was ended, asked, Where is Bassompierre ? "Then all the princes and lords presented me to him, that I might embrace his knees, and he caressed me greatly; and I should never have thought, that so great a king would have been so kind and so familiar with a young man of my sort. He took me by the hand, and presented me to the Duchess of Beaufort,* his mistress, whose robe I kissed; and the king, to give me an opportunity of saluting and kissing her, went to another part of the room.'

In the beginning of the year 1599, we find the following incident:-"The court returned to Paris, and the parliament made a remonstrance to the king against passing the edict of Nantes, in favour of those of the religion, to which the king made an excellent reply. I was present.'

Henry the Fourth's frank, easy manners, to which he was, probably, more indebted for the attachment of his subjects, than to any other quality, appear in several traits.

"Two days after," says Bassompierre, "I went to Fontainbleau, and, as somebody had told the king that I had some beautiful Portugal pieces and other gold coin, he asked me whether I would play for them against his mistress: having agreed to this, he made me stay and play with her while he was hunting, and, in the evening, he played too. This gave me great familiarity with the king and the duchess, and conversing, one day, about the causes which had led me

Gabrielle d'Estrées.

to come to France, I told him frankly that I did not come with any intention of engaging in his service, but only to pass some time, and then to go to do the same at the court of Spain, before I came to any determination as to the conduct and aim of my future life; but that he had so charmed me, that, if he would accept my service, I would go no further to seek a master, but would devote myself to him till death. He embraced me, and assured me, that I could not find a better master than he would be to me, nor one who could love me more or contribute more to my fortune and advancement. This was on the 12th of March. From that time, I regarded myself as a Frenchman; and I can say, that, from that time, I found so much kindness in him, so much affability, and such proofs of good-will, that his memory will be deeply engraven in my heart during the remainder of my days."

He was sent by Henry to Paris, with the duchess, who was going thither to perform the religious exercises of the holy week. After the service of the Ténébres, he says, "she asked Mademoiselle de Guise to stay with her; but an hour afterwards, she was seized with a strong convulsion, from which she recovered; when, just as she was trying to begin a letter to the king, another convulsion came on so violently, that she never rose above it. She remained in this state all the night, and, on the following day, was delivered of a dead child; on Good Friday, at six in the morning, she expired. I saw her on the Thursday afternoon: she was then so changed that I should not have known her." Thus expired the Belle Gabrielle, whose charms have been said and sung in every succeeding age, and in every language. She seems to have had more hold over the gay monarch's affections than any other woman; no less from the gentleness, benignity, and sweetness of her nature, than from her extraordinary beauty. The chivalrous and romantic colouring which poets and romancers have given to the king's connection with her, does not, however, receive much confirmation from these memoirs, nor was his attachment strong enough to survive a week's separation: Bassompierre went with Marshal Ornano to bear these afflicting tidings to the king.

"When he saw the marshal," says he, "he suspected what news he brought, and broke out into violent lamentations. At last, we got him down to the abbey of Laussange, and laid him on a bed. He shewed every excess of grief that can be conceived. At length, he was put into a carriage, and was taken back to Fontainbleau, where all the principal lords and princes assembled around him. He begged all the company to return to Paris, to pray to God for his consolation. And as I was going away with all the others, he said, Bassompierre, you were the last who was near my mistress, remain also near me, to talk to me of her;' so that I staid, and we

were five or six days without more company, except some of the ambassadors who came to condole with him, and then returned immediately, But few days elapsed, however, before he began a new love affair with Mademoiselle d'Entragues, to whom he sent frequent messages by the Counts de Lude and Castelnault. At last, Madame d'Entragues came to stay at Malherbe to hunt, and sent to ask the king to come to divert his sorrow. He went, therefore, and fell violently in love with her."

To return to the charmante Gabrielle.-In the volume of Bassompierre's memoirs, collected by the President Henault, and published in 1803, we have the following portrait of her :

:

"I must say something of Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess de Beaufort she was third daughter of Madame d'Estrées, who made no scruple of making a traffic of her daughters. When Gabrielle was sixteen, being beautiful and finely made, she offered her to the king (Henry III.) through the Duke d'Epernon, who lived with Diana d'Estrées, her elder sister. The duke exaggerated her beauty to the king, and he sent six thousand crowns to Madame d'Estrées by Murtigny, who kept two thousand for himself; at which the king was so incensed, that he would not see him for a long time. Henry III. soon left her, As she grew up, her beauty became perfect; and, at length, M. Stanay, one of her many lovers, drew such a picture of her charms to Henry IV., that he fell in love with the description. He married her to Liancour, that she might follow the court; he then dissolved the marriage, made her Marchioness of Monceaux, and afterwards, Duchess of Beaufort. Lastly, having had three children by her, the Duke de Vendôme, the grand prior of France, and the Duchess d'Elbœuf, she died, when near giving birth to a fourth. This woman had such entire ascendancy over him, that she took part in all public affairs, advanced or kept back whom she pleased, and persuaded him to divorce the queen of Navarre, to marry her; for which end, she sent the President Syllery to Rome, to obtain the divorce from the pope. But God, in his love for France, did not permit this, and put an end to her life by an apoplexy, in the year 1599, at Paris. During the king's attachment to her, he had various other passions, but she governed herself so skilfully with him, that she retained supreme ascendancy over him."

Her successor, Mademoiselle d'Entragues, afterwards Madame de Verneuil, was even more dissolute, and only affected reserve that she might extort from the monarch a written promise of marriage in case she had a son. In the midst of this pursuit, we find him engaged in two other amours. But enough of this. Our readers must be as well convinced as we are, that the habits of this admired mirror of kings and cavaliers were such as would not be tolerated now; and that so far from bewailing the degeneracy of modern manners, we have reason to congratulate ourselves,that no man, let his rank or station be what it may, would now, in any country in Europe, make such

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an unblushing and even triumphant display of so deplorable a weakness. This winter," says Bassompierre, "I fell in love with la Ramire, and the king with Madame de Boinville, and Mademoiselle Clin." This is the sentimental style of that time of day. We must pick up, by the way, a repartee of the king's. "This evening came news of the retreat of Canisse, which the king praised very warmly, and the action of Monsieur de Mercœur. And thereupon, the Count de Soissons having said, that he was astonished M. de Mercœur had performed it, since he did not esteem him a great captain;-what would you say of him then, replied the king, if he had not taken you prisoner, and defeated your brother?"

Madame de Verneuil, who afterwards conspired against the king, was now the chief favorite.

Having heard," says he, "that she was arrived at St. André de la Côte, he set off thither, and lent me one of his horses; I rode the whole way at a trot; and was so tired, that, when I arrived, I could hardly stand. The king and Madame de Verneuil had a quarrel at meeting, so that he was going back in anger, and said to me, 'Bassompierre, order our horses to be saddled.' I told him I would order his to be saddled, but, as for mine, that I declared myself of Madame de Verneuil's party, and would stay with her. And after taking a great deal of pains to reconcile two people who were well inclined to it, I made peace, and we slept at St. André. The next day he went to Grenoble, and took Madame de Verneuil with him."

Having obtained a divorce from Margaret of Valois, he married Mary of Medicis at the latter part of this year, and went to meet her at Lyons. On the arrival of the royal bride at Nemours, the king presented Madame de Verneuil to her, “à qui," says Bassompierre, "elle fit fort bonne chère." Having met M. de Biron, who was on his way to England, at Calais, he was prevailed upon to accompany him over.

"We did not find the queen in London. She was at the Vine, in Hampshire, a distance of forty leagues, whither M. de Biron was conducted to her. He was very honourably received by the queen, who expressed great esteem for him. She went a hunting next day with more than fifty ladies, on hackneys, and sent for M. Biron, to join in the hunt."

Early in the next year, Bassompierre took leave of the king to go to the wars in Hungary.

My German relations," says he, "who had seen all my family entirely devoted to arms, could not endure that I should pass my life in the idleness which the peaceful state of France occasioned. They continually urged me to quit the French court, and go to the wars of Hungary; and, for this purpose, procured me a regiment of three thousand foot, which the circle of Bavaria was to furnish for the year

1603. I refused this post for that year, as I did not think it fitting that, without any knowledge of the country, I should all at once take the command of three thousand men; but I determined to go as a volunteer, with the best outfit I could."

He accordingly passed through Germany, where the chief of his adventures are of the kind for which that country has always enjoyed a high reputation. Scarcely a dinner or supper is recorded, which does not end in the moral extinction. of all the party. The details of this war are of little interest: we select the following.

"At day-break, on the 29th of September, we made a sortie from our great intrenchment, with two hundred Hungarians, to reconnoitre the enemy; but we had not gone three hundred paces, when we found some hundred horse in front of us. The Hungarians, according to their custom, were all dispersed about, and we had not thirty horse with us, all of whom took flight as soon as the enemy appeared. But I, who could not imagine that the Turks had advanced so far, and who could scarcely distinguish them from the Hungarians, thought they belonged to us, when a Hungarian runaway called out to me, Heu, domine, adsunt Turce: which made me retreat too."

In the beginning of the year 1604, he returned to Vienna, and thence went to Prague, where he fell deeply in love with a beautiful Hungarian widow of eighteen, named Anna Esther Preschestoris, to whom he remained for some time strongly attached. Here he was presented to the emperor, who treated him with great distinction. The emperor spoke Spanish, and desired Bassompierre to do the same. The following scene, which occurred at Prague, is too illustrative of the relative strength of the civil and military powers at that period, to be omitted. On occasion of the marriage of the emperor's grand equerry, Rosworm, general in chief of the emperor's armies in Hungary, agreed with Bassompierre and six others to go on horseback masked, and to parade the town splendidly habited. "As we passed before the town hall," says he, some lords came up to us, and said, in the Sclavonian tongue, that the emperor had forbidden any one to appear masked in the city; to which we answered nothing, but that we did not understand Sclavonic. They let us pass then, but, on our return, we found chains stretched across all the avenues to the square." Beginning by the hindmost, they took six of the party prisoners, some of whom called out to Rosworm and Bassompierre, to look to themselves. On this, they seized their swords, and Rosworm cut down a serjeant. They were immediately surrounded by above two hundred serjeants, through whom they passed, sword in hand, but not without

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