frank a spirit and with so kindly a grace that my feelings and my obligations are half as deep again. However, I swear to you over again, sir, by the living God, on my faith, my honor, and my salvation, that I will be to you, all my life long, loyal subject and faithful servant; I will never fail you nor desert you; I will have while I live no desires or designs of importance which are not suggested by your Majesty himself; nor will I ever be cognizant of them in the case of others, though they were my own children, without expressly opposing them and giving you notice of them at once.’ ‘There, there, cousin,’ rejoined the kinm, ‘I quite believe it; and that you may be able to love me and serve me long, go rest you, refresh you, and drink a draught at the castle. I have in my cellars some Arbois wine, of which I will send you two bottles, for well I know that you do not dislike it. And here is Rosny, whom I will lend you to accompany you, to do the honors of the house and to conduct you to your chamber: he is one of my oldest servants, and one of those who have been most rejoiced to see that you would love me and serve me cordially.’” [(OEconomies royales, t. iii. pp. 7-10.] Mayenne was as good as his word. After the edict of Folembray, he lived fourteen years at the court of Henry IV., whom he survived only about sixteen months [for he died on the 4th of October, 1611, and Henry IV. was assassinated by Ravaillac on the 13th of May, 1610], and during all that time he was loyal and faithful to him, never giving him any but good counsels and sometimes rendering him useful services. A rare example of a party-chief completely awakened and tamed by experience: it made him disgusted with fanaticism, faction, civil war, and complicity with the foreigner. He was the least brilliant but the most sensible, the most honest, and the most French of the Guises. Henry IV., when seriously ill at Fontainebleau in 1608, recommended him to Queen Mary de’ Medici as one of the men whom it was most important to call to the councils of state; and, at the approach of death, Mayenne, weary and weak in the lap of repose, could conscientiously address those who were around him in such grand and Christian language as this: “It is no new thing to know that I must die; for twelve years past my lingering and painful life has been for the most part an apprenticeship thereto. My sufferings have so dulled the sting of death that I rather count upon it than dread it; happy to have had so long a delay to teach me to make a good end, and to rid me of the things which formerly kept me from that knowledge. Happy to meet my end amongst mine own people and to terminate by a peaceful death the sufferings and miseries of my life. I formerly sought death amidst arms; but I am better pleased, for my soul’s salvation, to meet it and embrace it on my bed than if I had encountered it in battle, for the sake of the glory of the world.”