her own delegated supremacy; never to suffer herself to be misled by
her passions or prejudices, but to weigh all her measures maturely
before she insisted upon their enforcement; to protect the Jesuits, but
at the same time to be careful not to allow them to increase their
numbers, or to form establishments upon the frontiers; to attach the
nobility by favours which could not endanger the interests of the
throne, but to be cautious in her concessions where they might tend to
any undue aggrandizement of their former power and influence; and, above
all, not rashly to undertake any war against the Huguenots until she had
received full assurance of being enabled to terminate it successfully.
As regarded the Dauphin, he declared that his greatest desire was to see
him the husband of Mademoiselle de Lorraine, provided the Duke should
not have other children; as, in such case, the French nation would be
aggrandized by the territories of a state from which it had received
much and grievous injury. He expressed, moreover, the greatest
repugnance to the proposed marriage between Madame Elisabeth and the
Infant of Spain, alleging as his reason the perpetual rivalry of the two
powers, and the circumstance that the prosperity of the one must
necessarily involve the abasement of the other; and finally he declared
that were he compelled to give the hand of his daughter to a Spanish
Prince, it should be to a younger brother who might be declared Duke of
Flanders, and not to the heir to the throne.[13]

The Queen, while listening to these counsels, did not cease her
entreaties that he would abandon his intention of quitting the kingdom,
and leave the conduct of the campaign to his generals. She represented
her own inexperience in state affairs, the extreme youth of the Dauphin,
and the long life which he himself might still enjoy if he did not
voluntarily place himself in situations of peril, which was the less
required of him as he had already established his fame as a soldier
throughout the whole of Europe. Henry answered only by a jest. Love and
ambition alike lured him on; and beneath their baneful influence
prudence and reason were silenced.[14]

On the morning succeeding the coronation of his royal consort, the King
attended mass at the church of the Feuillants, where he was accompanied
by the Duc de Guise and M. de Bassompierre; and as he was still in the
same exuberant spirits as on the preceding day, a great deal of light
an