Francis, son of the King of France. Their nuptials were to be
celebrated with great magnificence. The King and Queen of Navarre
returned to the court of France to attend the marriage. They took with
them their son. His beauty and vivacity excited much admiration in the
French metropolis. One day the young prince, then but six or seven
years of age, came running into the room where his father and Henry
II. of France were conversing, and, by his artlessness and grace,
strongly attracted the attention of the French monarch. The king
fondly took the playful child in his arms, and said affectionately,

"Will you be my son?"

"No, sire, no! that is my father," replied the ardent boy, pointing to
the King of Navarre.

"Well, then, will you be my son-in-law?" demanded Henry.

"Oh yes, most willingly," the prince replied.

Henry II. had a daughter Marguerite, a year or two younger than the
Prince of Navarre, and it was immediately resolved between the two
parents that the young princes should be considered as betrothed.

Soon after this the King and Queen of Navarre, with their son,
returned to the mountainous domain which Jeanne so ardently loved. The
queen devoted herself assiduously to the education of the young
prince, providing for him the ablest teachers whom that age could
afford. A gentleman of very distinguished attainments, named La
Gaucherie, undertook the general superintendence of his studies. The
young prince was at this time an exceedingly energetic, active,
ambitious boy, very inquisitive respecting all matters of information,
and passionately fond of study.

Dr. Johnson, with his rough and impetuous severity, has said,

"It is impossible to get Latin into a boy unless you flog it into
him."

The experience of La Gaucherie, however, did not confirm this
sentiment. Henry always went with alacrity to his Latin and his Greek.
His judicious teacher did not disgust his mind with long and laborious
rules, but introduced him at once to words and phrases, while
gradually he developed the grammatical structure of the language. The
vigorous mind of Henry, grasping eagerly at intellectual culture,
made rapid progress, and he was soon able to read and write both Latin
and Greek with fluency, and ever retained the power of quoting, with
great facility and appositeness, from the classical writers of Athens
and of Rome. Even in these early days he seized upon the Greek phrase
[Greek: "_e nikan e apothanein_"], _to