oung prince meditated deeply upon the import of those words.
Surmising their significance, and alarmed for the safety of his
mother, he dispatched a trusty messenger to communicate to her his
suspicions.

His mind was now thoroughly aroused to vigilance, to careful and
hourly scrutiny of the plots and counterplots which were ever forming
around him. While others of his age were absorbed in the pleasures of
licentiousness and gaming, to which that corrupt court was abandoned,
Henry, though he had not escaped unspotted from the contamination
which surrounded him, displayed, by the dignity of his demeanor and
the elevation of his character, those extraordinary qualities which so
remarkably distinguished him in future life, and which indicated, even
then, that he was born to command. One of the grandees of the Spanish
court, the Duke of Medina, after meeting him incidentally but for a
few moments, remarked,

"It appears to me that this young prince is either an emperor, or is
destined soon to become one."

Henry was very punctilious in regard to etiquette, and would allow no
one to treat him without due respect, or to deprive him of the
position to which he was entitled by his rank.

Jeanne d'Albret, the Queen of Navarre, was now considered the most
illustrious leader of the Protestant party. Catharine, the better to
disguise her infamous designs, went with Henry, in great splendor, to
make a friendly visit to his mother in the little Protestant court of
Bearn. Catharine insidiously lavished upon Jeanne d'Albret the warmest
congratulations and the most winning smiles, and omitted no courtly
blandishments which could disarm the suspicions and win the confidence
of the Protestant queen. The situation of Jeanne in her feeble
dominion was extremely embarrassing. The Pope, in consequence of her
alleged heresy, had issued against her the bull of excommunication,
declaring her incapable of reigning, forbidding all good Catholics, by
the peril of their own salvation, from obeying any of her commands. As
her own subjects were almost all Protestants, she was in no danger of
any insurrection on their part; but this decree, in that age of
superstition and of profligacy, invited each neighboring power to
seize upon her territory. The only safety of the queen consisted in
the mutual jealousies of the rival kingdoms of France and Spain,
neither of them being willing that the other should receive such an
accession to its political imp