t connected
the King my husband and my brother, and that, to dissolve their
union, it would be necessary to create a coolness between me and
my husband, and to work up a quarrel of rivalship betwixt them
both by means of Madame de Sauves, whom they both visited. This
abominable plot, which proved the source of so much disquietude
and unhappiness, as well to my brother as myself, was as artfully
conducted as it was wickedly designed.

Many have held that God has great personages more immediately
under his protection, and that minds of superior excellence have
bestowed on them a good genius, or secret intelligencer, to apprise
them of good, or warn them against evil. Of this number I might
reckon the Queen my mother, who has had frequent intimations
of the kind; particularly the very night before the tournament
which proved so fatal to the King my father, she dreamed that she
saw him wounded in the eye, as it really happened; upon which she
awoke, and begged him not to run a course that day, but content
himself with looking on. Fate prevented the nation from enjoying so
much happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice.
Whenever she lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before
her, and would immediately cry out, "God save my children!" well
knowing it was the harbinger of the death of some one of them,
which melancholy news was sure to be confirmed very shortly after.
During her very dangerous illness at Metz, where she caught a
pestilential fever, either from the coal fires, or by visiting
some of the nunneries which had been infected, and from which
she was restored to health and to the kingdom through the great
skill and experience of that modern AEsculapius, M. de Castilian her
physician--I say, during that illness, her bed being surrounded by
my brother King Charles, my brother and sister Lorraine, several
members of the Council, besides many ladies and princesses, not
choosing to quit her, though without hopes of her life, she was
heard to cry out, as if she saw the battle of Jarnac: "There!
see how they flee! My son, follow them to victory! Ah, my son
falls! O my God, save him! See there! the Prince de Conde is
dead!" All who were present looked upon these words as proceeding
from her delirium, as she knew that my brother Anjou was on the
point of giving battle, and thought no more of it. On the night
following, M. de Losses brought the news of the battle; and, it
being supposed that she