e first place, the Spanish Cabinet had been long
labouring to undermine the power of France, in which they had failed
through the energy and wisdom of the late King, whose opposition to the
alliance which they had proposed between the Dauphin and their own
Infanta had, moreover, wounded their pride, and disappointed their
projects; and there were not wanting many who accused the agents of
Philip of having instigated the assassination; while another rumour,
less generally disseminated, ascribed the act of Ravaillac to the
impulse of personal revenge, elicited by the circumstance that Henry
had first dishonoured and subsequently abandoned a sister to whom he was
devotedly attached.

That M. d'Epernon was politic enough to impress upon the mind of the
Queen the extreme probability of either or both of these facts, there
can be little doubt, as it would appear from the testimony of several
witnesses that the intention of the murderer was known for some time
before the act was committed; and nothing could be more rational than
the belief that if the agents of Spain were indeed seeking to secure a
trusty tool for the execution of so dark a deed, they would rather
entrust it to one who could by the same means satiate his own thirst for
private revenge, than to a mere bravo who perilled life and salvation
simply from the greed of gain.

Day by day, moreover, the ministers were overwhelmed by accusations
which pointed at different individuals. Those who had opposed the return
of the Jesuits to France openly declared that they were the actual
assassins; while even in the provinces several persons were arrested who
had predicted before its occurrence the death of the King, and the means
by which it was to be accomplished; and finally the affair became so
involved that, with the exception of the woman De Comans to whom
allusion has been elsewhere made, and who was condemned to imprisonment
for life, all the suspected persons were finally acquitted.[32]

At eight o'clock on the morning succeeding the assassination of the King
all the members of the different Chambers assembled in their scarlet
robes and capes, the presidents wearing their cloaks and mortar-shaped
caps; and half an hour afterwards the Chancellor, accompanied by several
masters of the Court of Requests, and dressed from head to foot in black
velvet, took his place below the First President in the great hall of
the Augustine monastery, where the young King was to hol