que je vous avois envoye pour le donner de ma part au
cardinal Alexandrin_, puisque mon dict cousin et mes autres ministres
trouvent que _le don seroit inutile et perdu_." Mackintosh, iii., App. C.,
p. 348.

[880] Despatch of March 29, 1572, Digges, 182, 183. It must be noticed
that the permission to have mass celebrated in Bearn had been purposely
left out in the original basis.

[881] Jeanne d'Albret to Henry of Navarre, Tours, Feb. 21, 1572,
Rochambeau, Lettres d'Antoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne d'Albret (Paris,
1877), 340.

[882] Jeanne d'Albret to M. de Beauvoir, Blois, March 11, 1572, ibid.,
345.

[883] "'Il m'a donc dit quelque chose.' 'Je croy bien qu'ouy, Madame, mais
c'est quelque chose qui n'approche point de cela.' Elle se prist a rire,
car nottez qu'elle ne parle a moy qu'en badinant." Same letter, ibid.,
348. How keenly Jeanne felt this treatment may be inferred from a
characteristic sentence: "Je vous diray encores que je m'esbahis comme je
peux porter les traverses que j'ay, car _l'on me gratte, l'on me picque,
l'on me flatte, l'on me brave, l'on me veult tirer les vers du nez_, sans
se laisser aller, bref je n'ay que Martin _seul qui marche droict, encores
qu'il ait la goutte_, et M. le comte (Nassau) qui me faict tous les bons
offices qu'il peut." Same letter, ibid., 353.

[884] The letter is inserted entire in La Laboureur, Additions aux Mem. de
Castelnau, i. 859-861. There is much in this letter that lends probability
to Miss Freer's view (Henry III., i. 89) that Catharine had at this time
begun to be opposed to an alliance which she feared might result in the
diminution of her influence at court, and that she therefore "sought, by
denying all that had before been conceded, and by proposing in lieu
conditions which she knew Jeanne could not accept, to throw the odium of a
rupture on the Queen of Navarre."

[885] The contract of marriage was signed at Blois, April 11th.

[886] Jehan de la Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur), 143, 144.

[887] See an interesting account of the Queen of Navarre's last days, her
will, etc., in Vauvilliers, Hist. de Jeanne d'Albret, iii. 179-188.

[888] He is said already to have obtained the surname of "l'empoisonneur
de la reine." Vauvilliers, iii. 193.

[889] Vauvilliers, Hist. de Jeanne d'Albret, _ubi supra_. Unfortunately
for the "glove" theory, the Reveille-Matin des Massacreurs, written within
the next year (see p. 172, Cimber and Danjou, "du mois d'aoust