d, cousin;" and, taking away his hand and
laying it upon his own heart, he added, "Here is the doublet of
innocence." On the evening of the 22d of December, 1588, when Charlotte
de Semblancay, Marchioness of Noirmoutiers, to whom he was tenderly
attached, pressed him to depart, or at any rate not to be present at the
council next day, the only answer he made her was to hum the following
ditty, by Desportes, a poet of the day:--

"My little Rose, a little spell
Of absence changed that heart of thine;
And I, who know the change full well,
Have found another place for mine.
No more such fair but fickle she
Shall find me her obedient;
And, flighty shepherdess, we'll see
Which of the twain will first repent."

Henry III. was scarcely less disturbed, but in quite a different way,
than the Duke of Guise. For a long time past he had been thinking about
getting rid of the latter, just as he had thought for a long time, twenty
years before, about getting rid of Admiral de Coligny; but since the date
of his escape from the popular rising on the day of the Barricades, he
had hoped that, thanks to the adoption of the edict of union and to the
convocation of the states-general, he would escape the yoke of the Duke
of Guise. He saw every day that he had been mistaken; the League, and
consequently the Duke of Guise, had more power than he with the
states-general; in vain had the king changed nearly all his ministers; in
vain had he removed his principal favorite, the Duke of Epernon, from the
government of Normandy to that of Provence; he did not obtain from the
states-general what he demanded, that is, the money he wanted; and the
states required of him administrative reforms, sound enough at bottom,
but suggested by the Duke of Guise with an interested object, and
calculated to shackle the kingly authority even more than could be done
by Guise himself directly. At the same time that Guise was urging on the
states-general in this path, he demanded to be made constable, not by the
king any longer, but by the states themselves. The kingship was thus
being squeezed between the haughty supremacy of the great lords,
substitutes for the feudal regimen, and the first essays of that free
government which is nowadays called the parliamentary regimen. Henry
III. determined with fear and trembling to disembarrass himse