cabinet. The latter bowed as he bade her good night, and said, with
the most open and cordial of smiles, 'Cousin, I thank you with all my
heart.'

The bright look seemed to her another shaft. 'What happiness!' said she
to herself. 'Can I overthrow it? Bah! it will crumble of its own accord,
even if I did nothing! And my father and brother!'

Communication with her father and brother was not always easy to Diane,
for she lived among the Queen-mother's ladies. Her brother was quartered
in a sort of barrack among the gentlemen of Monsieur's suite, and the
old Chevalier was living in the room Berenger had taken for him at the
Croix de Lorraine, and it was only on the most public days that they
attended at the palace. Such a day, however, there was on the ensuing
Sunday, when Henry of Navarre and Marguerite of France were to be
wedded. Their dispensation was come, but, to the great relief of
Eustacie, there was no answer with it to the application for the
CASSATION of her marriage. In fact, this dispensation had never emanated
from the Pope at all. Rome would not sanction the union of a daughter
of France with a Huguenot prince; and Charles had forged the document,
probably with his mother's knowledge, in the hope of spreading her toils
more completely round her prey, while he trusted that the victims might
prove too strong for her, and destroy her web, and in breaking forth
might release himself.

Strange was the pageant of that wedding on Sunday, the 17th of August,
1572. The outward seeming was magnificent, when all that was princely in
France stood on the splendidly decked platform in front of Notre-Dame,
around the bridegroom in the bright promise of his kingly endowments,
and the bride in her peerless beauty. Brave, noble-hearted, and devoted
were the gallant following of the one, splendid and highly gifted the
attendants of the other; and their union seemed to promise peace to a
long distracted kingdom.

Yet what an abyss lay beneath those trappings! The bridegroom and his
comrades were as lions in the toils of the hunter, and the lure that had
enticed them thither was the bride, herself so unwilling a victim that
her lips refused to utter the espousal vows, and her head as force
forward by her brother into a sign of consent; while the favoured lover
of her whole lifetime agreed to the sacrifice in order to purchase the
vengeance for which he thirsted, and her mother, the corrupter of her
own children, looked com