One of the brief writings of that period which make known clearly the person and nature of Henri IV. is the Memoir of the first president of Normandy, Claude Groulard, at all times faithful to the king, who has left us a naïve account of his frequent journeys to that prince and the sojourns he made with him. Among many remarks which Groulard has collected from the lips of Henri IV. there is one that paints the king well in his sound good sense, his freedom from rancour, and his knowledge--always practical, never ideal--of human beings. Groulard is relating the approaching marriage of the king with a princess of Florence. When Henri IV. announced it to him the worthy president replied by an erudite comparison with the lance of Achilles, saying that the Florentine house would thus repair the wounds it had given to France in the person of Catherine de’ Medici. “But I ask you,” said Henri IV., speaking thereupon of Catherine and excusing her, “I ask you what a poor woman could do, left by the death of her husband, with five little children on her arms, and two families in France who were thinking to grasp the crown,--ours and the Guises. Was she not compelled to play strange parts to deceive first one and then the other, in order to guard, as she has done, her sons, who have successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman? I am surprised that she never did worse.” SAINTE-BEUVE, _Causeries du Lundi_ (1855). DISCOURSE III. MARIE STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND, FORMERLY QUEEN OF OUR FRANCE. Those who wish to write of this illustrious Queen of Scotland have two very ample subjects: one her life, the other her death; both very ill accompanied by good fortune, as I shall show at certain points in this short Discourse in form of epitome, and not a long history, which I leave to be written by persons more learned and better given to writing than I. This queen had a father, King James, of worth and valour, and a very good Frenchman; in which he was right. After he was widowed of Madame Magdelaine, daughter of France, he asked King François for some honourable and virtuous princess of his kingdom with whom to re-marry, desiring nothing so much as to continue his alliance with France.