r, I cannot in honor
refuse to comply with the summons of the king, meantime committing myself
to the providence of Him who holds in his hand the hearts of kings and
princes, and has numbered my years--nay, the very hairs of my head. If I
succeed in going in arms to the Low Countries, I hope that I may do signal
service, and change hatred into good-will. But, if I fall there, at least
the enmity against me will cease, and perhaps men will live in peace,
without its being needful to set a whole world in commotion for the
protection of the life of a single man."[894]

[Sidenote: The dispensation delayed.]

[Sidenote: The king's earnestness.]

The juncture was critical, although the future still looked auspicious.
Charles was resolved that the marriage of his sister should go forward,
and seemed almost as resolute, when he had thus secured peace at home
between Papist and Huguenot, to embark in a war against Spain--the natural
enemy of French repose and greatness. Gregory the Thirteenth--for Pius the
Fifth had died on the first of May, 1572, although his maxims and his
counsels were unhappily still alive, and endowed with a mischievous
activity--refused to grant the dispensation for the marriage except on
impossible conditions.[895] But Charles was too impatient to await his
caprice. "My dear aunt," he once said to the Queen of Navarre, a short
time before her death, "I honor you more than the Pope, and I love my
sister more than I fear him. I am not indeed a Huguenot, but neither am I
a blockhead; and if the Pope play the fool too much, I will myself take
Margot," his common nickname for his sister, "by the hand, and give her
away in marriage in full preche."[896]

Charles was apparently equally in earnest in his intention to maintain his
edict for the advantage of the Huguenots. Accordingly he published a new
declaration to this effect, and sent it to his governors, accompanied with
a letter expressive of his great gratification that the spirit of distrust
was everywhere giving place to confidence, a proof of which was to be
found in the recent restitution of the four cities of La Rochelle,
Montauban, La Charite, and Cognac, by those in whose hands they were
intrusted by the edict of St. Germain.[897] And Charles's correspondence
shows still further that the projects urged by Coligny, Louis of Nassau,
and other prominent patriots, had made a deep impression upon his
imagination, now that for the first time the prospec