Catholic, had embraced the Protestant faith. This exposed him to
persecution, and he was driven from France with the loss of his
estates. He was compelled to support himself by manual labor. Soured
in disposition, exasperated and half maddened, he insanely felt that
he would be doing God service by the assassination of the _Butcher of
Vassy_, the most formidable foe of the Protestant religion. It was a
day of general darkness, and of the confusion of all correct ideas of
morals.

Henry, the eldest son of the Duke of Guise, a lad of but thirteen
years of age, now inherited the titles and the renown which his bold
ancestors had accumulated. This was the Duke of Guise who was the
bandit chieftain in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

One day Henry II. was holding his little daughter Marguerite, who
afterward became the wife of Henry of Navarre, in his lap, when Henry
of Guise, then Prince of Joinville, and the Marquis of Beaupreau, were
playing together upon the floor, the one being but seven years of age,
and the other but nine.

"Which of the two do you like the best?" inquired the king of his
child.

"I prefer the marquis," she promptly replied.

"Yes; but the Prince of Joinville is the handsomest," the king
rejoined.

"Oh," retorted Marguerite, "he is always in mischief, and he will be
master every where."

Francis, the Duke of Guise, had fully apprehended the ambitious,
impetuous, and reckless character of his son. He is said to have
predicted that Henry, intoxicated by popularity, would perish in the
attempt to seat himself upon the throne of France.

"Henry," says a writer of those times, "surpassed all the princes of
his house in certain natural gifts, in certain talents, which procured
him the respect of the court, the affection of the people, but which,
nevertheless, were tarnished by a singular alloy of great faults and
unlimited ambition."

"France was mad about that man," writes another, "for it is too little
to say that she was in love with him. Her passion approached idolatry.
There were persons who invoked him in their prayers. His portrait was
every where. Some ran after him in the streets to touch his mantle
with their rosaries. One day that he entered Paris on his return from
a journey, the multitude not only cried '_Vive Guise!_' but many sang,
on his passage, '_Hosanna to the son of David!_'"

3. _The House of Bourbon._ The origin of this family fades away in the
remoteness of antiquity.