more than once attempted to hang or drown the
bishop, who, they cried out, was a Calvinist; the fears and jealousies
of the Guises had been roused by this political mission. Among all these
troubles and delays, Montluc was most affected by the rumour that the
election was on the point of being made, and that the plague was
universal throughout Poland, so that he must have felt that he might be
too late for the one, and too early for the other.

At last Montluc arrived, and found that the whole weight of this
negotiation was to fall on his single shoulders; and further, that he
was to sleep every night on a pillow of thorns. Our bishop had not only
to allay the ferment of the popular spirit of the evangelicals, as the
protestants were then called, but even of the more rational catholics of
Poland. He had also to face those haughty and feudal lords, of whom each
considered himself the equal of the sovereign whom he created, and whose
avowed principle was, and many were incorrupt, that their choice of a
sovereign should be regulated solely by the public interest; and it was
hardly to be expected that the emperor, the czar, and the King of Sweden
would prove unsuccessful rivals to the cruel, and voluptuous, and
bigoted duke of Anjou, whose political interests were too remote and
novel to have raised any faction among these independent Poles.

The crafty politician had the art of dressing himself up in all the
winning charms of candour and loyalty; a sweet flow of honeyed words
melted on his lips, while his heart, cold and immovable as a rock, stood
unchanged amidst the most unforeseen difficulties.

The emperor had set to work the Abbe Cyre in a sort of ambiguous
character, an envoy for the nonce, to be acknowledged or disavowed as
was convenient; and by his activity he obtained considerable influence
among the Lithuanians, the Wallachians, and nearly all Prussia, in
favour of the Archduke Ernest. Two Bohemians, who had the advantage of
speaking the Polish language, had arrived with a state and magnificence
becoming kings rather than ambassadors. The Muscovite had written
letters full of golden promises to the nobility, and was supported by a
palatine of high character; a perpetual peace between two such great
neighbours was too inviting a project not to find advocates; and this
party, Choisnin observes, appeared at first the most to be feared. The
King of Sweden was a close neighbour, who had married the sister of
their