ung child to succeed
him, very well knowing that France needs a man, and that, with a child,
the king and the reign are unhappy."

CHAPTER XXXIV.----HENRY III. AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS. (1574-1589.)

[Illustration: Henry III----388]

Though elected King of Poland on the 9th of May, 1573, Henry, Duke of
Anjou, had not yet left Paris at the end of the summer. Impatient at his
slowness to depart, Charles IX. said, with his usual oath, "By God's
death! my brother or I must at once leave the kingdom: my mother shall
not succeed in preventing it." "Go," said Catherine to Henry; "you will
not be away long." She foresaw, with no great sorrow one would say, the
death of Charles IX., and her favorite son's accession to the throne of
France. Having arrived in Poland on the 25th of January, 1574, and been
crowned at Cracow on the 24th of February, Henry had been scarcely four
months King of Poland when he was apprised, about the middle of June,
that his brother Charles had lately died, on the 30th of May, and that he
was King of France. "Do not waste your time in deliberating," said his
French advisers; "you must go and take possession of the throne of France
without abdicating that of Poland: go at once and without fuss." Henry
followed this counsel. He left Cracow, on the 18th of June, with a very
few attendants. Some Poles were apprehensive of his design, but said
nothing about it. He went a quarter of a league on foot to reach the
horses which were awaiting him, set off at a gallop, rode all night, and
arrived next day early on the frontier of Moravia, an Austrian province.
The royal flight created a great uproar at Cracow; the noblemen, and even
the peasants, armed with stakes and scythes, set out in pursuit of their
king. They did not come up with him; they fell in with his chancellor
only, Guy du Faur, Sieur de Pibrac, who had missed him at the appointed
meeting-place, and who, whilst seeking to rejoin him, had lost himself in
the forests and marshes, concealed himself in the osiers and reeds, and
been obliged now and then to dip his head, in the mud to avoid the arrows
discharged on all sides by the peasants in pursuit of the king. Being
arrested by some people who were for taking him back to Cracow and paying
him out for his complicity in his master's flight, he with great
difficulty obtained his release and permission to continue his road.
Destined to become more celebrated by his writings and by his Quatr