esides warfare; he excelled in the art of
winning over or embarrassing his vanquished foes. After the submission
of Paris, the two princesses of the house of Lorraine who had remained
there, the Duchesses of Nemours and of Montpensier, one the mother and
the other the sister of the Duke of Mayenne, were preparing to go and
render homage to the conqueror; Henry anticipated them, and paid them the
first visit. As he was passing through a room where hung a portrait of
Henry de Guise, he halted and saluted it very courteously. The Duchess
of Montpensier, who had so often execrated him, did not hesitate to
express her regret that "her brother Mayenne had not been there to let
down for him the drawbridge of the gate by which he had entered Paris."
"Ventre-saint-gris," said the king, "he might have made me wait a long
while; I should not have arrived so early." He knew that the Duchess of
Nemours had desired peace, and when she allowed some signs of vexation to
peep out at her not having been able to bring her sons and grandsons to
that determination, "Madame," said he, a there is still time if they
please." At the close of 1594, he imported disorganization into the
household of Lorraine by offering the government of Provence to the young
Duke Charles of Guise, son of the Balafre; who eagerly accepted it; and
he from that moment paved the way, by the agency of President Jeannin,
for his reconciliation with Mayenne, which he brought to accomplishment
at the end of 1595.

The close of this happy and glorious year was at hand. On the 27th of
September, between six and seven P.M., a deplorable incident occurred,
for the second time, to call Henry IV.'s attention to the weak side of
his position. He was just back from Picardy, and holding a
court-reception at Schomberg House, at the back of the Louvre. John
Chastel, a young man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city,
slipped in among the visitors, managed to approach the king, and dealt
him a blow with a knife just as he was stooping to raise and embrace
Francis de la Grange, Sieur de Montigny, who was kneeling before him.
The blow, aimed at the king's throat, merely slit his upper lip and broke
a tooth. "I am wounded!" said the king. John Chastel, having dropped
his knife, had remained on the spot, motionless and confused. Montigny,
according to some, but, according to others, the Count of Soissons, who
happened to be near him, laid hands upon him, saying, "Her