n a summer's evening. Nothing escaped
them--rank, dignity, bishopric, abbey, office, or other dainty
morsel--all alike were eagerly devoured. Spies and salaried agents were
posted in all parts of the kingdom to convey the earliest intelligence
of the death of those who possessed any valuable benefices. Physicians
in their employ at Paris sent in frequent bulletins of the health of
sick men who enjoyed offices in church or state; nor were instances
wanting in which, for the present of a thousand crowns, they were said
to have hastened a wealthy patient's death. Even the king was unable to
give as he wished, and sought to escape the importunity of his favorites
by falsely assuring them that he had already made promises to others.
Thus only could they be kept at bay.[554] The Guises and Montmorency, to
render their power more secure, courted the favor of the king's
mistress. The Cardinal of Lorraine, in particular, distinguished himself
by the servility which he displayed. For two years he put himself to
infinite trouble to be at the table of Diana.[555] After her elevation
to the peerage, he addressed to her a letter, still extant, in which he
assured her that henceforth his interest and hers were inseparable.[556]
To give yet greater firmness to the bond uniting them, the Guises
brought about a marriage between their third brother, the Duke of
Aumale, and one of the daughters of the Duchess of Valentinois; while
the Constable of Montmorency, at a later time, undertook to gain a
similar advantage for his own family by causing his son to wed Diana, a
natural daughter of the king.

[Sidenote: Persecution to atone for moral blemishes.]

It may at first sight appear somewhat incongruous that a king and court
thus given up, the former to flagrant immorality, the latter to the
unbridled pursuit of riches and honors, should early have exhibited a
disposition to carry forward in an aggravated form the system of
persecution initiated in the previous reign. The secret of the apparent
inconsistency may be found in the fact that the courtiers were not slow
in perceiving, on the one hand, the almost incalculable gains which the
confiscation of the goods of condemned heretics might be made to yield,
and, on the other, the facility with which a monarch of a disposition
naturally gentle and humane[557] could be persuaded to countenance the
most barbarous cruelties, as the supposed means of atoning for the
dissoluteness of his own life.