And his mother, Catherine de Parthenay-Soubise, was not the woman to discourage such lifelong fancies in her sons. Fairy blood, that of the Lusignans, ran in her veins; “grande rêveuse,” her absence of mind and many oddities were the talk of Paris; her favourite vision was that of the Duc de Nevers and Père Joseph, a crusade against the Turks. We are told that she was not pleased when Henry IV., whom she disliked, made her eldest son a Duke, her husband being the eleventh Viscount of his name. According to the proud old family motto, that name alone made its bearer a King’s equal. Madame de Rohan had more reason to be discontented at her son’s marriage, arranged by Henry, with Marguerite de Béthune, daughter of the Duc de Sully, then a mere child. They were married in the Protestant temple at Charenton, and the story goes that the famous and waggish minister Du Moulin asked aloud, when the little girl in her white frock was led up to him--“Do you present this child to be baptised?” The white robe of innocence did not long suit the Duchesse de Rohan, and never had a good man a worse wife. Very pretty, attractive and clever, she led a life worthier of the Valois Court than of the fine old Huguenot houses of Sully and Rohan. Not even Madame de Chevreuse, herself a Rohan by birth, was more free of moral restraint. The Duc de Rohan, concerned with greater matters, seemed superbly unconscious of his wife’s love-affairs, and turned away coolly from the shocked pastors who tried to enlighten him. In a political sense, they were one. Whenever her husband needed her help, Madame de Rohan sent her lovers to the right-about, plotted for him, followed him in his campaigns. In the winter of 1625, when the Duc de Rohan was trying to support his brother’s naval raid by a revolt in Languedoc, Aubery describes how “the Duchesse de Rohan his wife acted with no less vigour, and, as if it were her design to throw terror into vulgar minds, travelled often by night with torches, in a mourning coach drawn by eight black horses.” “Suscités par le diable ou quelques autres qui ne valent pas mieux.” No doubt the Cardinal had accurate knowledge of the influences, diabolical or other, which had brought about the Huguenot rising at this awkward moment. It was partly the work of the angry people of La Rochelle, who saw their town perpetually threatened by royal forts on land and their harbour watched by royal ships at sea. They counted on the help of the Protestant powers, England and Holland, to make a favourable bargain with the King’s government, already entangled in the Swiss and Genoese campaigns. And they were backed up in a quarter which might well have been unexpected. The money that provided Soubise with ships came from Spain. Rohan and he, more than once treating secretly with the enemies of France, may not have deserved Richelieu’s epithet of “Antichristi,” but were certainly anti-patriotic.