ns, where he was detained for a fortnight, his council not being
able to agree as to the expediency of the campaign.

There can be little doubt that under other circumstances Henry would
have found means to bring them to a decision; but as he was enabled
during their discussions to receive daily intelligence of the Marquise,
he submitted quietly to a detention which seconded his own wishes.

At length the period arrived in which Madame de Verneuil was about to
enforce her claim upon the tenderness of her royal lover, and already he
spoke of returning for a while to Monceaux; when a violent storm, and
the falling of a thunderbolt in the very chamber of the invalid, so
affected her nervous system, that she lost the infant upon which she had
based all her anticipations of greatness; and although the King hastened
to condole with her upon her disappointment, and even remained in
constant attendance upon her sick-bed until she was partially
convalescent, the great link between them was necessarily broken; a fact
of which she was so well aware that her temper gave way beneath the
trial, and she bitterly upbraided her royal lover for the treachery of
which she declared him to have been guilty in permitting his ministers
to effect his betrothal with Marie de Medicis, when she had herself, as
she affirmed, sacrificed everything for his sake. In order to pacify her
anger, the King loaded her with new gifts, and consoled her by new
protestations; nor did his weakness end there, for so soon as her health
was sufficiently re-established, he wrote to entreat of her to join him
at Lyons; although not before she had addressed to him a most submissive
letter, in which she assured him that her whole happiness depended upon
his affection, and that as she had too late become aware that his high
rank had placed an inseparable barrier between them, and that her own
insignificance precluded the possibility of her ever becoming his wife,
she at least implored of him to leave to her the happiness of still
remaining his mistress, and to continue to feel for her the same
tenderness, with so many demonstrations of which he had hitherto
honoured her.[93]

This was an appeal to which the enamoured monarch willingly responded,
and the nature of her reception at Lyons tended still further to restore
peace between them. What the Lyonnese had previously done in honour of
Diane de Poitiers, when, as the accredited and _official_ mistress of
Henri II, s