purgatory of the Venetians; it is the place where emperors and kings of France make the Republic expiate the sin of having ever entered into alliance with them.” Francis went to Bordeaux to meet his sons and his new wife. At Bordeaux, Cognac, Amboise, Blois, and Paris, galas, both at court and amongst the people, succeeded one another for six months; and Europe might consider itself at peace. The peace of Cambrai was called the ladies’ peace, in honor of the two princesses who had negotiated it. Though morally different and of very unequal worth, they both had minds of a rare order, and trained to recognize political necessities, and not to attempt any but possible successes. They did not long survive their work: Margaret of Austria died on the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22d of September, 1531. All the great political actors seemed hurrying away from the stage, as if the drama were approaching its end. Pope Clement VII. died on the 26th of September, 1534. He was a man of sense and moderation; he tried to restore to Italy her independence, but he forgot that a moderate policy is, above all, that which requires most energy and perseverance. These two qualities he lacked totally; he oscillated from one camp to the other without ever having any real influence anywhere. A little before his death he made France a fatal present; for, on the 28th of October, 1533, he married his niece Catherine de’ Medici to Francis I.’s second son, Prince Henry of Valois, who by the death of his elder brother, the Dauphin Francis, soon afterwards became heir to the throne. The chancellor, Anthony Duprat, too, the most considerable up to that time amongst the advisers of Francis I., died on the 9th of July, 1535. According to some historians, when he heard, in the preceding year, of Pope Clement VII.’s death, he had conceived a hope, being already Archbishop of Sens, and a cardinal, of succeeding him; and he spoke to the king about it. “Such an election would cost too dear,” said Francis I.; “the appetite of cardinals is insatiable; I could not satisfy it.” “Sir,” replied Duprat, “France will not have to bear the expense; I will provide for it; there are four hundred thousand crowns ready for that purpose.” “Where did you get all that money, pray?” asked Francis, turning his back upon him; and next day he caused a seizure to be made of a portion of the chancellor-cardinal’s property. “This, then,” exclaimed Duprat, “is the king’s gratitude towards the minister who has served him body and soul!” “What has the cardinal to complain of?” said the king: “I am only doing to him what he has so often advised me to do to others.” [_Trois Magestrats Francais du Seizieme Siecle,_ by Edouard Faye de Brys, 1844, pp. 77-79.] The last of the chancellor’s biographers, the Marquis Duprat, one of his descendants, has disputed this story. [_Vie d’Antoine Duprat,_ 1857, p. 364.] However that may