Guises?
Was she not obliged to make use of strange personages to outwit both of
them, and yet to preserve, as she did, her children, who reigned
successively, thanks to the discreet conduct of so sagacious a woman? I
wonder that she did not do even worse!" His perpetual pecuniary
difficulties, so common to kings of France, developed in him other
qualities. L'Estoile relates that his fine horses were returned to him
in Paris because there were no funds with which to provide for them. The
king turned to M. d'O, the Governor of Paris, and asked him how this
came to be. "Sire," replied the latter, "there is no money." "My
condition," said the king, "is, indeed, deplorable! I shall presently be
obliged to go naked and on foot." Then, turning to a _valet de chambre_,
he asked him how many shirts he possessed. "A dozen, sire; some of them
are torn." "And handkerchiefs, have I not eight?" "At present, there are
only five." "One night, when D'Aubigne and La Force were sleeping near
the King of Navarre, the former complained bitterly to the second of
their master's stinginess. La Force, overwhelmed with fatigue, was not
listening. 'Do you not hear what I am saying?' asked D'Aubigne. La
Force, rousing himself, demanded the subject of his discourse. 'Eh! he
is telling thee,' said the king, who had heard it all, 'that I am a
skinflint [_un ladre vert_], and the most ungrateful mortal on the face
of the earth.' 'He did not manifest any resentment toward me,' adds
D'Aubigne; 'but neither did he give me a quarter of an ecu the more.'"

[Illustration: INVITATION TO THE FUNERAL OF A MAN. PERIOD OF CHARLES X.

Fac-simile of a lithograph, by Perrin, printed by Girod. A companion
form exhibits a young man seated, in lieu of the young woman.]

His second marriage, with Marie de Medicis, a niece of the Pope, was no
more happy than royal marriages usually were. The pontiff had granted
him a divorce from Marguerite de Valois, whose conduct was thought to be
too frivolous even for those times; and the royal nuptials were
solemnized at Florence in October, 1600, and greatly feted in Paris the
following January. "A dull woman, who brought him neither heart nor
beauty nor wit, but the largest dot that could then be found (six
hundred thousand ecus of gold, equivalent to eighteen or twenty millions
of francs to-day)." "His mistresses--less by their beauty than by
gaiety and good humor--held an influence over him which probably she
herself might ha