The pope remained ten days longer at Bologna. There was a talk of an interview between him and the King of France, to whom he had written with his own hand. The papal nuncio had proposed to the king that the emperor should be present also. 'Provided the King of England be the fourth,' answered Francis.[395] 'We should be unwilling, the King of England and I,' added he, 'to be present at the interview except with forces equal to those of the emperor, for fear of a surprise.... Now it might happen that, the escorts of these _not very friendly_ princes being together, we should begin a war instead of ratifying a peace.'[396] They accordingly fell back upon the conference of _two_, pending which the marriage should be completed. Nice was at first selected as the place of meeting; but the Duke of Savoy, who did not like to see the French at Nice, objected. 'Well, then,' said the pope, 'I will go to Antibes, to Fréjus, to Toulon, to Marseilles.' To ally himself with the family of France, he would have gone beyond the columns of Hercules. Francis, on his side, desired that the pope, who had waited for the emperor in Italy, should come and seek him in his own kingdom. The pope thus showed him greater honour than he had shown Charles—on which point he was very sensitive. Marseilles was agreed upon. At last all was in proper train. The blood of the Valois and of the Medici was about to be united. The clauses, conditions, and conventions were all arranged. The marriage ceremony was to be magnificently celebrated in the city of the Phocæans. The pope was at the summit of happiness, and the bride's eyes sparkled with delight. The die was cast; Catherine de Medici would one day sit on the throne of France; the St. Bartholomew was in store for that noble country, the blood of martyrs would flow in torrents down the streets of Paris, and the rivers would roll through the provinces long and speechless trains of corpses, whose ghastly silence would cry aloud to heaven. But that epoch was still remote; and just now Paris presented a very different spectacle. It is time to return thither. [Footnote 368: Du Bellay, _Mémoires_, p. 179.] [Footnote 369: Ibid. p. 180.] [Footnote 370: Du Bellay, _Mémoires_, p. 180. Guicciardini, _Wars of Italy_, ii. bk. xvi. pp. 894-897.] [Footnote 371: Guicciardini, _ibid._] [Footnote 372: 'Cæsar arbitratus illud conjugium quasi per simulationem a rege oblatum.'—Pallavicini, _Hist. Concil. Trid._ lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 274.] [Footnote 373: 'Adulterinam esse monetam qua rex ipsum commercari studebat.'—Ibid.] [Footnote 374: Du Bellay, _Mém._ p. 180. Pallavicini, _ibid._ Guicciardini, _Wars of Italy_, ii. p. 898.] [Footnote 375: Guicciardini, ii. p. 898.] [Footnote 376: 'Quo fortasse magis dubitanter ac pedetentim processisset.'—Pallavicini, _Hist. Concil. Trid._ i. p. 274.] [Footnote 377: 'Gallus explorato æmuli consilio, ut ipsum eluderet, eo statim properavit.'—Ibid. Du Bellay, _Mémoires_. Guicciardini, _Wars of Italy_.]