ny
undertook Henry III.'s commission. He at the same time received another
from Sieur de Brigueux, governor of the little town of Beaugency, who
said to him, "I see well, sir, that the king is going the right way to
ruin himself by timidity, irresolution, and bad advice, and that
necessity will throw us into the hands of the League: for my part, I will
never belong to it, and I would rather serve the King of Navarre. Tell
him that I hold, at Beaugency, a passage over the Loire, and that if he
will be pleased to send to me you or M. de Rebours, I will admit into the
town him whom he sends to me." Upon receiving these overtures, the King
of Navarre thought a while, scratching his head; then he said to Rosny,
"Do you think that the king has good intentions towards me, and means to
treat with me in good faith?" "Yes, sir, for the present; and you need
have no doubt about it, for his straits constrain him thereto, having
nothing to look to in his perils but your assistance." He had some
dinner brought into his own cabinet for Rosny, and then made him post off
at once. On arriving in the evening at Tours, whither Henry III. had
fallen back, Rosny was taken to him, about midnight, at the top of the
castle; the king sent him off that very night; he consented to everything
that the King of Navarre proposed; promised him a town on the Loire, and
said he was ready to make with him not a downright peace just at first,
but "a good long truce, which, in their two hearts, would at once be an
eternal peace and a sincere reconciliation."

When Rosny got back to Chatellerault, "there was nothing but rejoicing;
everybody ran to meet him; he was called 'god Rosny,' and one of his
friends said to the rest, 'Do you see yon man? By God, we shall all
worship him, and he alone will restore France; I said so six years ago,
and Villandry was of my opinion.'"

Thus was the way paved and the beginning made, between the two kings, of
an alliance demanded by their mutual interests, and still more strongly
by the interests of France, ravaged and desolated, for nearly thirty
years past, by religious civil wars. Henry of Navarre had profound
sympathy for his country's sufferings, an ardent desire to put a stop to
them, and at the same time the instinct to see clearly that the day had
come when the re-establishment of harmony and common action between
himself and Henry de Valois was the necessary and at the same time
possible means of attaining