I was presented to Catherine while she was at Nerac. No allusion was made to the circumstances which had caused my flight from Paris, or, indeed, to my having ever been in Paris. Yet, from her scrutiny of my features, I knew that she recalled those circumstances with my name. But Nerac was not the place where it would serve her to concern herself about me. I learned from one of Catherine's gentlemen that Mlle. d'Arency, who had not come with her to Nerac, had wedded the Marquis de Pirillaume, who was jealous and kept her on his estate in Dauphiny, away from the court. I wished him joy of her. When Catherine and her troop went back to the French court, leaving Marguerite at Nerac, they could boast of a few Huguenot gentlemen won over to their designs, but I was not one of the few. I do not say that I did not amuse myself where charming women abounded, but I kept my heart to myself. I had not resolved to become invulnerable to woman, but I had determined that she by whom I would let myself be wounded should be one vastly unlike any in Catherine's train. When I should find the woman pure as beautiful, incapable of guile, I would love. "Somewhere in France," I often said to myself, "that woman exists. I shall know her when I see her." As in the former affair, I had my ideal already formed, and was already in love, watching for the embodiment of that ideal to appear. But this second ideal was different from the first. And it is time to tell how at last I met her,--and how, for a while, the reality seemed worse even than the first. The death of the Duke of Anjou, after his reconciliation with the King, his brother, and his failure to win the crown he sought in the Netherlands, was a great event for us in Gascony. It left our Henri of Navarre next in succession to the throne of France. And our Henri was a sturdy man, while Henri III. seemed marked by destiny to follow the three other sons of Catherine to an early grave. It appeared that Marguerite monopolized all the longevity granted to the family. But we knew that the Guises and their League would not let our Huguenot Henri peacefully ascend his throne. Therefore, Henri's policy was to strengthen himself against the time when the death of Henri III. should leave the throne vacant for him. It was his interest also to prevent a usurpation of that throne during the life of Henri III., for such a usurpation would eventually exclude himself also. Thus circumstance made him the natural ally of Henri III. It was, conversely, the interest of the Guises to sow enmity between the two kings. The power of the League in France, and particularly in Paris, was now so great that Henri III. dared not oppose the wishes of the Duke of Guise. He was reduced to devices for gaining time. And so, against his own interest, he sanctioned the war which the League presently demanded against the Huguenots,--a war which might do two things for the Duke of Guise: