even the daughter of
Catherine de Medicis herself could desire. Poets sang her praise under
the name of Urania;[12] flatterers sought her smiles by likening her to
the goddesses of love and beauty, and she lived in a perpetual
atmosphere of pleasure and adulation.

The marriage-portion of Marguerite had consisted of the two provinces of
the Agenois and the Quercy, which had been ceded to her with all their
royal prerogatives; but even after this accession of revenue the
resources of Henry of Navarre did not exceed those of a private
gentleman, amounting, in fact, only to a hundred and forty thousand
livres, or about six thousand pounds yearly. The ancient kingdom of
Navarre, which had once extended from the frontier of France to the
banks of the Ebro, and of which Pampeluna had been the capital, shorn of
its dimensions by Ferdinand the Catholic at the commencement of the
sixteenth century, and incorporated with the Spanish monarchy, now
consisted only of a portion of Lower Navarre, and the principality of
Bearn, thus leaving to Henry little of sovereignty save the title. The
duchy of Albret in Gascony, which he inherited from his
great-grandfather, and that of Vendome, his appanage as a Prince of the
Blood-royal of France, consequently formed no inconsiderable portion of
his territory: while the title of Governor of Guienne, which he still
retained, was a merely nominal dignity whence he derived neither income
nor influence; and so unpopular was he in the province that the citizens
of Bordeaux refused to admit him within their gates.

Nevertheless, the young monarch who held his court alternately at Pau
and at Nerac, the capital of the duchy of Albret, expended annually upon
his household and establishment nearly twelve thousand pounds, and that
at a period when, according to the evidence of Sully, "the whole Court
could not have furnished forty thousand livres;" [13] yet so
inadequately were those about him remunerated, that Sully himself, in
his joint capacity of councillor of state and chamberlain, received only
two thousand annual livres, or ninety pounds sterling. This royal penury
did not, however, depress the spirits of the frank and free-hearted
King, who eagerly entered into every species of gaiety and amusement.
Jousts, masques, and ballets succeeded each other with a rapidity which
left no time for anxiety or _ennui_; and Marguerite has bequeathed to us
in her memoirs so graphic a picture of the royal circl