unds of honour and virtue. Had she
always done so, she had not brought upon herself a misfortune which has
proved of such fatal consequence to myself as well as to her.

But our happiness was too great to be of long continuance, and fresh
troubles broke out betwixt the King my husband and the Catholics, and
gave rise to a new war. The King my husband and the Marechal de Biron,
who was the King's lieutenant in Guienne, had a difference, which was
aggravated by the Huguenots. This breach became in a short time so wide
that all my efforts to close it were useless. They made their separate
complaints to the King. The King my husband insisted on the removal of
the Marechal de Biron, and the Marshal charged the King my husband, and
the rest of those who were of the pretended reformed religion, with
designs contrary to peace. I saw, with great concern, that affairs were
likely soon to come to an open rupture; and I had no power to prevent it.

The Marshal advised the King to come to Guienne himself, saying that in
his presence matters might be settled. The Huguenots, hearing of this
proposal, supposed the King would take possession of their towns, and,
thereupon, came to a resolution to take up arms. This was what I feared;
I was become a sharer in the King my husband's fortune, and was now to be
in opposition to the King my brother and the religion I had been bred up
in. I gave my opinion upon this war to the King my husband and his
Council, and strove to dissuade them from engaging in it. I represented
to them the hazards of carrying on a war when they were to be opposed
against so able a general as the Marechal de Biron, who would not spare
them, as other generals had done, he being their private enemy. I begged
them to consider that, if the King brought his whole force against them,
with intention to exterminate their religion, it would not be in their
power to oppose or prevent it. But they were so headstrong, and so
blinded with the hope of succeeding in the surprise of certain towns in
Languedoc and Gascony, that, though the King did me the honour, upon all
occasions, to listen to my advice, as did most of the Huguenots, yet I
could not prevail on them to follow it in the present situation of
affairs, until it was too late, and after they had found, to their cost,
that my counsel was good. The torrent was now burst forth, and there was
no possibility of stopping its course until it had spent its utmost
stre