All christendom thought as this potentate did: a shudder ran through Europe, and every man said to himself as he bent his head: ‘Behold the master whom the fates assign us!’ At Naples a devout voice was heard to exclaim: ‘Thou hast laid the world at his feet!’ It has been said that if in our day a king should be made prisoner, the heir to the throne or a regent would succeed to all his rights; but in the sixteenth century, omnipotence dwelt in the monarch’s person, and from the depths of his dungeon he could bind his country by the most disastrous treaties.[422] Charles V. determined to profit by this state of things. He assembled his council. The cruel Duke of Alva eloquently conjured him not to release his rival until he had deprived him of all power to injure him. ‘In whom is insolence more natural,’ he said, ‘in whom is fickleness more instinctive than in the French? What can we expect from a king of France?... Invincible emperor, do not miss the opportunity of increasing the authority of the empire, not for your own glory, but for the service of God.’[423] Charles V. appeared to yield to the duke’s advice, but it was advice according to his own heart; and while repeating that a christian prince ought not to triumph in his victory over another, he resolved to crush his rival. M. de Beaurain, viceroy of Naples, Lannoy, and the Constable of Bourbon, so detested by Francis I., waited all three upon the royal captive. Francis had overplayed the part of a suppliant, a character so new for him. ‘Instead of a useless prisoner,’ he had written to Charles, ‘set at liberty a king who will be your slave for ever.’ Charles proposed to him a dismemberment of France on three sides. The Constable of Bourbon was to have Provence and Dauphiny, and these provinces, united with the Bourbonnais which he possessed already, were to be raised into an independent kingdom. The King of England was to have Normandy and Guienne; and the emperor would be satisfied with French Flanders, Picardy, and Burgundy.... When he heard these monstrous propositions, Francis uttered a cry and caught up his sword, which his attendants took from his hands. Turning towards the envoys he said: ‘I would rather die in prison than consent to such demands.’ Thinking that he could make better terms with the emperor, he soon after embarked at Genoa and sailed to Spain. The delighted Charles gave up to him the palace of Madrid, and employed every means to constrain him to accept his disastrous conditions.[424] Who will succeed in baffling the emperor’s pernicious designs? A woman, Margaret of Valois, undertook the task.[425] The statesmen of her age considered her the best head in Europe; the friends of the Reformation respected her as their mother. Her dearest wish was to substitute a living christianity for the dead forms of popery, and she hoped to prevail upon her brother, ‘the father of letters,’ to labour with her in this admirable work. It