y badly paid for so
many services;" and, in spite of the king's letter, the Duke of Epernon
sent word to Mornay that he still took him for a gentleman of honor, and
still remained his friend. Henry IV. himself, with his delicate and
ready tact, was not slow to perceive that he had gone too far and had
behaved badly. Being informed that Mornay was in deep suffering, he sent
to him M. de LomLnie, his cabinet-secretary, to fully assure him that the
king would ever be his good master and friend. "As for master," said
Mornay, "I am only too sensible of it; as for friend, he belongs not to
me: I have known men to make attempts upon the king's life, honor, and
state, nay, upon his very bed; against them, the whole of them, he never
displayed so much severity as against me alone, who have done him service
all my life." And he set out on his way back to Saumur without seeing
the king again.

He returned thither with all he had dearest in the world, his wife,
Charlotte Arbaleste de la Borde, his worthy partner in all his trials--
trials of prosperity as well as adversity. She has full right to a few
lines in this History, for it was she who preserved to us, in her
_Memoires,_ the picture, so salutary to contemplate, of the life and
character of Mornay, in the midst of his friends' outbursts of passion
and his adversaries' brutal exhibitions of hatred. As intelligent as she
was devoted, she gave him aid in his theological studies and labors as
well as in the confronting of public events. "During this expedition to
Fontainebleau, I had remained," she says, "at Paris, in extreme
apprehension, recently recovered from a severe illness, harassed by the
deadlock in our domestic affairs. And, as for all that, I felt it not in
comparison with the inevitable mishap of this expedition. I had found
for M. du Plessis all the books of which he might possibly have need,
hunted up, with great diligence considering the short time, in the
libraries of all our friends, and I got them into his hands, but somewhat
late in the day, because it was too late in the day when he gave me the
commission." The private correspondence of these two noble persons is a
fine example of conjugal and Christian union, virtue, and affection. In
1605, their only son, Philip de Mornay, a very distinguished young man,
then twenty-six years of age, obtained Henry IV.'s authority to go and
serve in the army of the Prince of Orange, Maurice of Nassau, at deadly
wa