The Turks scrupulously observing their part of the agreement, believed that they thereby secured the neutrality of Poland. Sobieski had suffered injuries and affronts at the hands of Austria. The punctilious pride of the Emperor was likely to add to the difficulty of forgetting these. At the last moment only would Leopold consent to address the man who was to save his empire by the title of Majesty. The Poles either were loth to begin a new Turkish war at all, or represented the advantage which might be gained by holding aloof, till both combatants were exhausted. If they fought, Podolia, not Hungary, the recovery of Kaminiec in the former, not the relief of Vienna, should be their object. The Lithuanians were specially jealous of Sobieski, and slow to move. The Cossacks were not to be depended upon. The country was exhausted of men and money by former campaigns. The French ambassador, Forbin, Cardinal de Janson, was instructed to work upon the king by promises of the future support of Louis, of visionary crowns in Hungary, and of lands in Silesia as the price of his inactivity. No means were to be spared to detach Poland from Austria. The Cardinal worked cautiously, being an old friend and in expectation of future favours from Sobieski; but a special agent who was with him, the Marquis de Vitry, spared no pains to foment jealousies and to excite fears, and distributed money among the partisans of a peace policy. An abortive scheme was entertained for supplanting the king himself by another, more amenable to French influence. But the conspiracy was discovered, and the effect was disastrous to the French faction. The Poles rallied round the victor of Choczim and of Lemberg, and the authors of the intrigue against him were thrown into prison, or left the country. The French agent, Vitry, himself retired from Poland. Fortunately also for Christendom, and for the house of Austria, the wife of Sobieski, Marie Casimire de la Grange d'Arquien, a Frenchwoman, had determined to thwart the diplomacy of her native land. The failure of an intrigue, by which her father, a needy Marquis, was to have been converted into a wealthy Duke; a refusal of the French court to receive her, a French subject by birth, as an equal should she revisit France;--these causes made her an Austrian partisan. Sobieski, at the age of fifty-three, still burned with youthful ardour for his wife of forty-one, though scandal would have it that this King Arthur had his Lancelot in the Field-Marshal Jablonowski, one of the foremost of his officers. "His incomparable Maria," as the king addressed his queen in his frequent letters, was at all events vain and intriguing, and seldom influenced for good the husband whom she also adored. Yet on this occasion her persuasions seconded the arguments which would undoubtedly have swayed Sobieski apart from her. His true atmosphere was that of the battle-field. His most glorious victories were won over the infidels. The danger which