mber, 1570; the princes and great lords of the Protestant
party were invited; they did not think it advisable to withdraw
themselves from their asylum at La Rochelle; but Coligny wrote to the
queen-mother to excuse himself, whilst protesting his forgetfulness of
the past and his personal devotion. Four months afterwards, Coligny
himself married again; it was three years since he had lost his noble
wife, Charlotte de Laval, and he had not contemplated anything of the
kind, when, in the concluding weeks of 1570, he received from the castle
of St. Andre de Briord, in Le Bugey, a letter from a great lady, thirty
years of age, Jacqueline de Montbel, daughter of Count d'Entremont,
herself a widow, who wrote to him "that she would fain marry a saint and
a hero, and that he was that hero." "I am but a tomb," replied Coligny.
But Jacqueline persisted, in spite of the opposition shown by her
sovereign, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who did not like his fair
subjects to marry foreigners; and in February, 1571, she furtively
quitted her castle, dropped down the Rhone in a boat as far as Lyons,
mounted on horseback, and, escorted by five devoted friends, arrived at
La Rochelle. All Coligny's friends were urgent for him to accept this
passionate devotion proffered by a lady who would bring him territorial
possessions valuable to the Protestants, "for they were an open door to
Geneva." Coligny accepted; and the marriage took place at La Rochelle on
the 24th of March, 1571. "Madame Jacqueline wore, on this occasion,"
says a contemporary chronicler, "a skirt in the Spanish fashion, of black
gold-tissue, with bands of embroidery in gold and silver twist, and,
above, a doublet of white silver-tissue embroidered in gold, with large
diamond-buttons." She was, nevertheless, at that moment almost as poor as
the German arquebusiers who escorted her litter; for an edict issued by
the Duke of Savoy on the 31st of January, 1569, caused her the loss of
all her possessions in her own country. She was received in France with
the respect due to her; and when, five months after the marriage,
Charles; IX. summoned Coligny to Paris, "to serve him in his most
important affairs, as a worthy minister, whose virtues were sufficiently
known and tried," he sent at the same time to Madame l'Amirale a
safe-conduct in which he called her my fair cousin. Was there any one
belonging to that august and illustrious household who had, at that time,
a prese