usbanding of resources--the most powerful prince
in Europe, Henry was not likely to submit tamely to arrangements that
did not suit him. His instructions to Vaucelas were to keep open the
difference between France and the House of Austria arising out of
this matter of Cleves. All Europe knew that Henry desired to marry the
Dauphin to the heiress of Lorraine, so that this State might one day be
united with France; and it was partly to support this claim that he was
now disposed to attach the German princes to his interests.

Yet what Vaucelas told him in that letter was that certain agents at the
court of Spain, chief among whom was the Florentine ambassador, acting
upon instructions from certain members of the household of the Queen of
France, and from others whom Vaucelas said he dared not mention, were
intriguing to blast Henry's designs against the house of Austria, and to
bring him willy-nilly into a union with Spain. These agents had gone so
far in their utter disregard of Henry's own intentions as to propose to
the Council of Madrid that the alliance should be cemented by a marriage
between the Dauphin and the Infanta.

That letter sent Henry early one morning hot-foot to the Arsenal, where
Sully, his Minister of State, had his residence. Maximilien de Bethune,
Duke of Sully, was not merely the King's servant, he was his closest
friend, the very keeper of his soul; and the King leaned upon him and
sought his guidance not only in State affairs, but in the most intimate
and domestic matters. Often already had it fallen to Sully to patch up
the differences created between husband and wife by Henry's persistent
infidelities.

The King, arriving like the whirlwind, turned everybody out of the
closet in which the duke--but newly risen--received him in bed-gown and
night-cap. Alone with his minister, Henry came abruptly to the matter.

"You have heard what is being said of me?" he burst out. He stood with
his back to the window, a sturdy, erect, soldierly figure, a little
above the middle height, dressed like a captain of fortune in jerkin and
long boots of grey leather, and a grey hat with a wine-coloured ostrich
plume. His countenance matched his raiment. Keeneyed, broad of brow,
with a high-bridged, pendulous nose, red lips, a tuft of beard and
a pair of grizzled, bristling moustachios, he looked half-hero,
half-satyr; half-Captain, half-Polichinelle.

Sully, tall and broad, the incarnation of respectability and d