thout offensiveness, all
idea of union with Catherine of Cleves. "Anybody who can make me marry
the Princess of Portien," said he, "could make me marry a negress." He,
nevertheless, contracted this marriage, so greatly disdained, on the 4th
of October, 1570; and at this price recovered the good graces of Charles
IX. The queen-mother charged the Cardinal Louis de Lorraine, him whom
the people called Cardinal Bottles (from his conviviality), to publicly
give the lie to any rumor of a possible engagement between her daughter
Marguerite and Henry de Guise; and a grand council of the kings, after
three holdings, adopted in principle the marriage of Marguerite de Valois
with "the little Prince of Bearn."

Charles IX. at once set his hand to the work to turn this resolution to
good account, being the only means, he said, of putting a stop at last to
this incessantly renewed civil war, which was the plague of his life as
well as of his kingdom. He first of all sent Marshal de Cosse to La
Rochelle, to sound Coligny as to his feelings upon this subject, and to
urge him to thus cut short public woes and the Reformers' grievances.
"The king has always desired peace," said the marshal; "he wishes it to
be lasting; he has proved only too well, to his own misery and that of
his people, that of all the evils which can afflict a state, the most
direful is civil war. But what means this withdrawal, since the signing
of peace at St. Germain, of the Queen of Navarre and her children, of the
Prince of Conde, and so many lords and distinguished nobles, still
separated from their houses and their families, and collected together in
a town like Rochelle, which has great advantages by land and sea for all
those who would fain begin the troubles again? Why have they not
returned home? During the hottest part of the war, they ardently desired
to see once more their houses, their wives, and their children; and now,
when peace leaves them free to do so, they prefer to remain in a land
which is in some sort foreign, and where, in addition to great expenses,
they are deprived of the conveniences they would find at home. The king
cannot make out such absurdity; or, rather, he is very apprehensive that
this long stay means the hatching of some evil design." The Protestants
defended themselves warmly against this supposition; they alleged, in
explanation of their persistent disquietude, the very imperfect execution
of the conditions granted by t