.

As soon as his mother learned that he was approaching France, she set
out from Paris with a magnificent retinue to meet her pet child,
taking with her his brother, the Duke of Alencon, and Henry of
Navarre. Dissipation had impaired the mental as well as the physical
energies of the king, and a maudlin good-nature had absorbed all his
faculties. He greeted his brother and his brother-in-law with much
kindness, and upon receiving their oaths of obedience, withdrew much
of the restraint to which they previously had been subjected. Henry
was now known as Henry III. of France. Soon after his coronation he
married Louisa of Lorraine, a daughter of one of the sons of the Duke
of Guise. She was a pure-minded and lovely woman, and her mild and
gentle virtues contrasted strongly with the vulgarity, coarseness, and
vice of her degraded husband.

The Duke of Alencon was, however, by no means appeased by the kindness
with which he had been received by his brother the king. He called him
the robber of his crown, and formed a conspiracy for attacking the
carriage of his brother and putting him to death. The plot was
revealed to the king. He called his brother to his presence,
reproached him with his perfidy and ingratitude, but generously
forgave him. But the heart of Alencon was impervious to any appeals of
generosity or of honor. Upon the death of Henry III., the Duke of
Alencon, his only surviving brother, would ascend the throne.

The Duke of Guise hated with implacable rancor the Duke of Alencon,
and even proffered his aid to place Henry of Navarre upon the throne
in the event of the death of the king, that he might thus exclude his
detested rival. Francis, the Duke of Alencon, was impatient to reach
the crown, and again formed a plot to poison his brother. The king was
suddenly taken very ill. He declared his brother had poisoned him. As
each succeeding day his illness grew more severe, and the
probabilities became stronger of its fatal termination, Francis
assumed an air of haughtiness and of authority, as if confident that
the crown was already his own. The open exultation which he manifested
in view of the apparently dying condition of his brother Henry
confirmed all in the suspicion that he had caused poison to be
administered.

Henry III., believing his death inevitable, called Henry of Navarre to
his bedside, and heaping the bitterest invectives upon his brother
Francis, urged Henry of Navarre to procure his assass