th Spain
which hitherto had been little more than a presence. The matter of the
Duchy of Cleves was a pretext ready to his hand. To obtain the woman he
desired he would set Europe in a blaze.

He took that monstrous resolve at the very beginning of the new year,
and in the months that followed France rang with preparations. It rang,
too, with other things which should have given him pause. It rang with
the voice of preachers giving expression to the popular vied; that
Cleves was not worth fighting for, that the war was unrighteous--a war
undertaken by Catholic France to defend Protestant interests against the
very champions of Catholicism in Europe. And soon it began to ring, tool
with prophecies of the King's approaching end.

These prognostics rained upon him from every quarter. Thomassin, and the
astrologer La Brosse, warned him of a message from the stars that May
would be fraught with danger for him. From Rome--from the very pope
himself Came notice of a conspiracy against him in which he was told
that the very highest in the land were engaged. From Embrun, Bayonne,
and Douai came messages of like purport, and early in May a note was
found one morning on the altar of the church of Montargis announcing the
King's approaching death.

But that is to anticipate. Meanwhile, Henry had pursued his preparations
undeterred by either warnings or prognostications. There had been so
many conspiracies against his life already that he was become careless
and indifferent in such matters. Yet surely there never had been one
that was so abundantly heralded from every quarter, or ever one that
was hatched under conditions so propitious as those which he had himself
created now. In his soul he was not at ease, and the source of his
uneasiness was the coronation of the Queen, for which the preparations
were now going forward.

He must have known that if danger of assassination threatened him from
any quarter it was most to be feared from those whose influence with the
Queen was almost such as to give them a control over her--the Concinis
and their unavowed but obvious ally the Duke of Epernon. If he were
dead, and the Queen so left that she could be made absolute regent
during the Dauphin's minority, it was those adventurers who would become
through her the true rulers of France, and so enrich themselves and
gratify to the full their covetous ambitions. He saw clearly that his
safety lay in opposing this coronation--already fixed