and her ministers; and assuredly no worse policy could have been
adopted than that by which they were again induced to exile themselves
from their proper sphere of action. Too many interests were, however,
served by their absence for either counsellor or courtier to point out
to the Queen the extreme danger of driving them to extremities, save in
the instance of the Connetable, who, more and more chagrined by the
pitiful and even precarious position occupied by his son-in-law,
remonstrated earnestly with the Regent upon the peril of the course
which she had been induced to pursue.

"Remember, Madame," he said, "that the civil wars and wretchedness of
which this nation has been the prey during the last few reigns all owed
their origin to the fatal advice given to Catherine de Medicis to
disregard the legitimate claims of the Princes of the Blood; and those
who would induce your Majesty to follow her example are more bent upon
the furtherance of their own fortunes, and the increase of their own
power, than anxious for the welfare of the state. Should your Majesty,
therefore, suffer yourself to be influenced by their counsels, I foresee
nothing in the future but anarchy and confusion."

Unfortunately, however, the close alliance of the veteran Duke with one
of those very Princes whose cause he thus warmly advocated, and his
enmity towards the Guises, deprived his remonstrances of the force which
they might otherwise have possessed, and Marie de Medicis consequently
disregarded the warning until after-events caused her to feel and
acknowledge its value. Supported by the House of Guise and the Duc
d'Epernon, assured of the good faith of the Connetable and the Marechaux
de Bouillon and de Lesdiguieres, as well as deeply incensed by the
bearing of the two Princes in the Council; and, moreover, urged by her
more immediate favourites to assert her dignity, and to display towards
the malcontents a coldness and indifference as marked as that which they
exhibited towards herself, she dismissed the subject from her thoughts
as one of slight importance, and turned all her attention to the
brilliant festivities by which the declaration of the royal marriages
was to be celebrated.[140]

The besetting sin of Marie de Medicis was a love of magnificence and
display, and one of her greatest errors a wilful disregard of the
financial exigencies which her profuse liberality had induced. Thus the
splendour of the preparations which were ex