struck off. How is it that he offers you that
which is your own? It is that he has won over and corrupted them, and
that he is a party-leader to your prejudice." Tavannes, a rough and
faithful soldier, did not admit that there could be amongst men moral
ties of a higher kind than political ties. Charles IX., too weak in mind
and character to think and act with independence and consistency in the
great questions of the day, only sought how to elude them, and to leave
time, that inscrutable master, to settle them in his place. His
indecision brought him to a state of impotence, and he ended by inability
to do anything but dodge and lie, like his mother, and even with his
mother. Whilst he was getting his sister married to the King of Navarre
and concerting his policy with Coligny, he was adopting towards the three
principal personages who came to talk over those affairs with him three
different sorts of language; to Cardinal Alessandrino, whom Pope Pius V.
had sent to him to oppose the marriage, he said, "My lord cardinal, all
that you say to me is sound; I acknowledge it, and I thank the pope and
you for it; if I had any other means of taking vengeance on my enemies,
I would not make this marriage; but I have no other." With Jeanne
d'Albret, he lauded himself for the marriage as the best policy he could
pursue. "I give my sister," he said, "not to the Prince of Navarre, but
to all the Huguenots, to marry them as it were, and take from them all
doubt as to the unchangeable fixity of my edicts." And to humor his
mother Catherine, he said to her, on the very evening of his interview
with Jeanne d'Albret, "What think you, madam? Do I not play my partlet
well?" "Yes, very well; but it is nothing if it is not continued." And
Charles continued to play his part, even after the Bartholomew was over,
for he was fond of saying with a laugh, "My big sister Margot caught all
those Huguenot rebels in the bird-catching style. What has grieved me
most is being obliged to dissimulate so long."

His contemporary Catholic biographer, Papirius Masson, who was
twenty-eight years old at the time of the St. Bartholomew, says of him,
"He is impatient in waiting, ferocious in his fits of anger, skilfully
masked when he wishes, and ready to break faith as soon as that appears
to his advantage."

[Illustration: Charles IX. and Catherine de' Medici----354]

Such was the prince, fiery and flighty, inconsistent and artful,
accessible