from the snares of her rival, and detached him from every
other affair of gallantry, as he appeared to me perfectly sincere when
he urged me to induce her to conform to _his tastes_ and to _the
character of his mind_."

M. de Sully, great as he was in his official capacity, evidently
possessed little knowledge of a woman's nature, and the workings of a
woman's pride. We have seen what were the "tastes" of Henri IV, and what
was the "character of his mind"; and although it would undoubtedly have
proved both pleasant and convenient to the harassed minister that Marie
de Medicis should have devoured her grief and mortification, and have
received the mistresses of the King as the intimates of her circle, it
was a result little to be anticipated from a pure-hearted wife, who saw
herself the victim of every intriguing beauty whose novelty or notoriety
sufficed to attract the dissolute fancy of her consort. Even at the very
moment in which M. de Sully records this inferential reproach upon the
Queen, he admits that Henry was once more in the thrall of the Marquise,
and, moreover, the obsequious friend of Mademoiselle de Guise; and yet
he seeks to visit upon Marie the odium of a disunion which can only be,
with any fairness, attributed to the King himself, who, even while
professing to return to his allegiance as a husband, was openly
indulging in a system of licentiousness calculated to degrade him in the
eyes of a virtuous and exemplary woman.

That Marie de Medicis had many faults cannot be denied by her most
zealous biographer, but that she was outraged both as a wife and as a
mother is no less certain; and adopting, as we have a right to do, the
conjectural style of M. de Sully,--perhaps, we say in our turn, had the
Queen, from the period of her marriage, been treated with the deference
and respect which were her due, the harsher features of her character
might have become softened, and the faults which posterity has been
compelled to couple with her name might never have been committed.
Assuredly her period of probation was a bitter one, and it may be
doubted whether the axe of our own eighth Henry were not after all more
merciful in reality than the wire-drawn and daily-recurring torture to
which his namesake of France subjected the haughty and high-spirited
woman who was fated to find herself the victim of his vices.

The foreboding of M. de Sully was verified, for within a few days of the
interview just recorded bet