the great personages had
disappeared. The last of the real chiefs of the League, the brother of
Duke Henry of Guise, the old Duke of Mayenne, he on whom Henry, in the
hour of victory, would wreak no heavier vengeance than to walk him to a
stand-still, was dead. Henry IV.'s first wife, the sprightly and too
facile Marguerite de Valois, was dead also, after consenting to descend
from the throne in order to make way for the mediocre Mary de' Medici.
The Catholic champion whom Henry IV. felicitated himself upon being able
to oppose to Du Plessis-Mornay in the polemical conferences between the
two communions, Cardinal de Perron, was at the point of death. The decay
was general, and the same amongst the Protestants as amongst the
Catholics; Sully and Mornay held themselves aloof or were barely listened
to. In place of these eminent personages had come intriguing or
ambitious subordinates, who were either innocent of or indifferent to
anything like a great policy, and who had no idea beyond themselves and
their fortunes. The husband of Leonora Galigai, Concini, had amassed a
great deal of money and purchased the Marquisate of Ancre; nay, more, he
had been created Marshal of France, and he said to the Count of
Bassompiere, "I have learned to know the world, and I am aware that a
man, when he has arrived at a certain pitch of prosperity, comes down
with a greater run the higher he has mounted. When I came to France,
I was not worth a son, and I owed more than eight thousand crowns.
My marriage and the queen's kind favor has given me much advancement,
office, and honor; I have worked at making my fortune, and I pushed it
forward as long as I saw the wind favorable. So soon as I felt it
turning, I thought about beating a retreat and enjoying in peace the
large property we have acquired. It is my wife who is opposed to this
desire. At every crack of the whip we receive from Fortune, I continue
to urge her. God knows whether warnings have been wanting. My
daughter's death is the last, and, if we do not heed it, our downfall is
at hand." Then he quietly made out an abstract of all his property,
amounting to eight millions, with which he purposed to buy from the pope
the usufruct of the duchy of Ferrara, and leave his son, besides, a fine
inheritance. But his wife continued her opposition; it would be cowardly
and ungrateful, she said, to abandon the queen: "So that," cried he, "I
see myself ruined without any help for it;