r with Spain. He was killed in it on the 23d of October, at the
assault upon the town of Gueldres. On receiving news of his death,
"I have now no son," said his father; "therefore I have now no wife."
His sorrowful prediction was no delusion; six mouths after her son's
death Madame de Mornay succumbed, unable any longer to bear the burden
she was supporting without a murmur. Her Memoires concludes with this
expression: "It is but reasonable that this my book should end with him,
as it was only undertaken to describe to him our pilgrimage in this life.
And, since it hath pleased God, he hath sooner gone through, and more
easily ended his own. Wherefore, indeed, if I feared not to cause
affliction to M. du Plessis, who, the more mine grows upon me, makes me
the more clearly perceive his affection, it would vex me extremely to
survive him."

On learning by letter from Prince Maurice that the young man was dead,
Henry IV. said, with emotion, to those present, "I have lost the fairest
hope of a gentleman in my kingdom. I am grieved for the father. I must
send and comfort him. No father but he could have such a loss." "He
despatched on the instant," says Madame de Mornay herself, "Sieur
Bruneau, one of his secretaries, with very gracious letters to comfort
us; with orders, nevertheless, not to present himself unless he were sure
that we already knew of it otherwise, not wishing to be the first to tell
us such sad news." [_Memoires,_ t. ii. p. 107.] This touching evidence
of a king's sympathy for a father's grief effaced, no doubt, to some
extent in Mornay's mind his reminiscences of the conference at
Fontainebleau; one thing is quite certain, that he continued to render
Henry IV., in the synods and political assemblies of the Protestants, his
usual good offices for the maintenance or re-establishment of peace and
good understanding between the Catholic king and his malcontent former
friends.

A third Protestant, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, grandfather of Madame de
Maintenon, has been reckoned here amongst not the councillors, certainly,
but the familiar and still celebrated servants of Henry IV. He held no
great post, and had no great influence with the king; he was, on every
occasion, a valiant soldier, a zealous Protestant, an indefatigable lover
and seeker of adventure, sometimes an independent thinker, frequently an
eloquent and bold speaker, always a very sprightly companion. Henry IV.
at one time employed h