Among left-hand Royalties, the oldest was Charles de Valois, Comte d’Auvergne, afterwards Duc d’Angoulême, a man of a certain courage and humorous charm, but foolish, dishonest, and unlucky. He was the son of Charles IX. and Marie Touchet, who married the Comte d’Entraigues after the King’s death, and became the mother of Henriette d’Entraigues, Marquise de Verneuil, Henry IV.’s passion and the special abhorrence of Marie de Médicis. In a fit of jealous fury, and in the supposed interest of her children, Madame de Verneuil intrigued with Spain against Henry. It was only the King’s enduring infatuation which saved her half-brother, the Comte d’Auvergne, from losing his head. As it was, he spent ten of his best years, from 1606 to 1616, shut up in the Bastille. Henry’s own son by Gabrielle d’Estrées, Duchesse de Beaufort, the legitimised prince who was first known as César-Monsieur, then created Duc de Vendôme, was the spoilt favourite among his children. No more odious young fellow was to be found in France. Spiteful, of vicious tendencies, “c’est un mauvais drôle, violent, moqueur, brutal.” There was every probability that César, whom the King openly preferred to his little lawful son, the future Louis XIII., would one day be the most powerful of all the princes. Henry had already arranged a marriage for him with a rich heiress of royal blood, Françoise de Lorraine, only daughter of the Duc de Mercœur. Such were the bearers of some of the grandest old names in France, during the last years of Henry IV.’s reign. Hardly one of these men had any influence on affairs, either of the court or the nation. Concini and his wife, the Queen’s Italian favourites, were powerful at the Louvre and lived splendidly, though they worked chiefly behind the scenes as long as Henry lived. The Duc de Sully, with his royal friend and master, governed the kingdom. His wise white beard, his strict and careful management of the finances, demanded and obtained respect. This clever and obstinate Huguenot was certainly the best-feared man in France. He was also cordially hated for his grim, uncompromising manners, his impatient scorn of all courtly weaknesses and extravagances. But he was the one great statesman in France, beside whom the other ministers were of no account, and he would have laughed aloud, in the year 1608, if any one had prophesied coming disgrace in his ears: an honourable disgrace, it is true, but never to be retrieved; while, equally incredible, the young bishop of an obscure diocese was to wield a power beyond his own most ambitious dreams.