ith this answer Richardot was fain to retire crestfallen, mortified, and
unhappy. He expressed repentance and astonishment at the result, and
protested that those peoples were happy whose princes understood affairs.
His princes were good, he said, but did not give themselves the trouble
to learn their business.

Richardot then took his departure from Paris, and very soon afterwards
from the world. He died at Arras early in September, as many thought of
chagrin at the ill success of his mission, while others ascribed it to a
surfeit of melons and peaches.

"Senectus edam maorbus est," said Aerssens with Seneca.

Henry said he could not sufficiently wonder at these last proceedings at
his court, of a man he had deemed capable and sagacious, but who had been
committing an irreparable blunder. He had never known two such
impertinent ambassadors as Don Pedro de Toledo and Richardot on this
occasion. The one had been entirely ignorant of the object of his
mission; the other had shown a vain presumption in thinking he could
drive him from his fixed purpose by a flood of words. He had accordingly
answered him on the spot without consulting his council, at which poor
Richardot had been much amazed.

And now another envoy appeared upon the scene, an ambassador coming
directly from the Emperor. Count Hohenzollern, a young man, wild, fierce,
and arrogant, scarcely twenty-three years of age, arrived in Paris on the
7th of September, with a train of forty horsemen.

De Colly, agent of the Elector-Palatine, had received an outline of his
instructions, which the Prince of Anhalt had obtained at Prague. He
informed Henry that Hohenzollern would address him thus: "You are a king.
You would not like that the Emperor should aid your subjects in
rebellion. He did not do this in the time of the League, although often
solicited to do so. You should not now sustain the princes in disobeying
the Imperial decree. Kings should unite in maintaining the authority and
majesty of each other." He would then in the Emperor's name urge the
claims of the House of Saxony to the duchies.

Henry was much pleased with this opportune communication by de Colly of
the private instructions to the Emperor's envoy, by which he was enabled
to meet the wild and fierce young man with an arrogance at least equal to
his own.

The interview was a stormy one. The King was alone in the gallery of the
Louvre, not choosing that his words and gestures should be observ