with
avidity into the exciting pastime. We have frequent record of the
habitual high play of Marie de Medicis, who found in it a solace for her
sick-room and a diversion from her domestic annoyances, and thus the
dangerous propensity of the monarch was heightened by the presence of
the loveliest women of the land and the charm and fascination of wit and
intellect.

Madame de Verneuil was in despair; the coveted sceptre was sliding from
within her grasp, and with the ill-judged hope of regaining the
affections of her royal lover by exciting his jealousy, she encouraged
the attention of the Due de Guise, who, undismayed by the previous
attempt of his brother to divert the affections of another of the royal
favourites and its unfortunate result, at length openly avowed himself
the suitor of the brilliant Marquise, and even promised to make her his
wife; while the scandalous chroniclers of the time do not hesitate to
affirm that the Prince de Joinville himself had previously done the
same, but that his proverbial fickleness had protected him from so gross
a _mesalliance_.

In the case of the Duke, however, the affair wore a more serious aspect;
and so earnest did he appear in his professions that Madame de Verneuil,
anxious at once to secure an illustrious alliance and to revenge herself
upon the monarch, caused the banns of marriage between the Prince and
herself to be published with some slight alteration in their respective
names, which did not, however, suffice to deceive those who had an
interest in subverting her project; and the fact was accordingly
communicated to the King, upon whom it produced an effect entirely
opposite to that which had been contemplated by the vanity of the lady,
who had been clever enough to procure from M. de Guise a written promise
similar to that which she had formerly extorted from the monarch. Four
years previously the knowledge of such a perfidy on her part would have
overwhelmed Henry with anxiety, jealousy, and grief, but his passion for
the Marquise had, as we have seen, long been on the decline, and his
only feeling was one of indignation and displeasure. To the Marquise
herself he simply expressed his determined and unalterable opposition to
the alliance, but to the Duke he was far less lenient, reminding him of
the former offences of himself and his family, and forbidding him to
pursue a purpose so distasteful to all those who had his honour at
heart This was a fatal blow to Mada