lament that we are not all immaculate as our First Parents were in the
bowers of Paradise. His irregularities are universally known, and have,
perhaps, rendered him as celebrated in France as his warlike exploits or
pacific virtues; for they fell in with the prevailing passion of the
nation, and were felt by all to be some excuse for their own indulgences.
They are celebrated even in the well-known air which has become, in a
manner, the National Anthem:--

"Vive Henri IV.!
Vive le roi vaillant!
Ce Diable a quatre
A le triple talent
De boire et de battre,
Et d'etre vert galant."

Henry IV., however, had more apology than most men for these frailties. He
lived in an age, and had been bred up in a court, in which female virtue
was so rare that it had come to pass for a chimera, and licentious
indulgence so frequent that it had become a habit, and ceased to be a
subject of reproach. Naturally ardent, susceptible, and impetuous, he was
immersed in a society in which intrigue with high-born beauty was
universally considered as the great object and chief employment of life.
The poetry and romances which were in every hand inculcated nothing else.
His own Queen, Margaret of Valois, gave him the first example of such
irregularities, and while she set no bounds to her jealousy of his
mistresses, particularly La Belle Gabrielle, who so long held the monarch
captive, she had no hesitation in bestowing her own favours on successive
lovers with as little scruple as the King himself. In some instances,
however, he was more completely inexcusable. It is remarkable that the
attachments of Henry became more violent as he advanced in life, and had
attained the period when the passions are usually found to cool. In some
instances they impelled him into acts of vehemence and oppression wholly
unworthy of his character and heart. His passion, late in years, for the
young Princess of Conde--a child of seventeen, who might have been his
granddaughter--and which prompted her flight with her husband to the Low
Countries, on which he was preparing war for her recovery when cut short
by death, was ridiculous in one of his age, and grossly criminal to one in
her circumstances. But these passions pursued him to the very last; and
when his tomb was broken open, and remained exposed, by the Parisian mob
during the fury of the Revolution, the nicely combed and highly perfumed
beard, the scent of which filled the air, proved that the dagg