father, who was anxious to protect her from the assiduities of the
King, Nicolas d'Armeval, Seigneur de Liancourt, who was, alike in birth,
in person, and in fortune, unworthy of her hand. This ill-assorted union
produced the very result which it was intended to avert, for Henry found
means to separate the young couple immediately after their marriage, and
to attach Gabrielle to the Court, where she soon became the declared
favourite. On the birth of her first child (Cesar, Duc de Vendome),
Madame de Liancourt abandoned the name of her husband, from whom she
obtained a divorce, and assumed that of Marquise de Monceaux, which she
derived from an estate presented to her on that occasion by the King;
and on the legitimation of her son in January 1595, she already aspired
to the throne, and formed a party, headed by M. de Sillery, by whom her
pretensions were encouraged. She was subsequently created Duchesse de
Beaufort, and became the mother of Catherine-Henriette, married to the
Duc d'Elboeuf, and of Alexandre de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, who
were likewise legitimated. She died in childbirth, but not without
suspicion of poison, on Easter Eve, in the year 1599.

[30] Henri de la Tour, Vicomte de Turenne, Duc de Bouillon, Peer and
Marshal of France.

[31] Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigny was the son of Jean d'Aubigny, Seigneur
de Brie, in Xaintonge, and of Catherine de Lestang, and was born on the
8th of February 1550. At the age of six years he read with equal
facility the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; and eighteen months
afterwards translated the _Crito_ of Plato. The persecutions of the
Huguenots, which he witnessed in his early youth, and the solemn
injunctions of his father to revenge their wrongs, rendered him one of
the most zealous and uncompromising reformers under Henri IV. He died at
Geneva on the 20th of April 1630, aged eighty years, and was buried in
the cloisters of St. Pierre. D'Aubigny left behind him not only his own
memoirs, which are admirably and truthfully written, but also the biting
satire known as the _Aventures du Baron de Foeneste_, and the still more
celebrated _Confession de Sancy_.

[32] Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain, was the second daughter
of Philip II. She was the Gouvernante of the Low Countries; and although
no longer either young or handsome, she possessed an extraordinary
influence over her royal father, who was tenderly attached to her.

[33] Arabella Stuart, daugh