companying evil. Montluc procured a clever Frenchman to be
the bearer of his first despatch, in Latin, to the diet; which had
hardly assembled, ere suspicions and jealousies were already breaking
out. The emperor's ambassadors had offended the pride of the Polish
nobles by travelling about the country without leave, and resorting to
the infanta; and besides, in some intercepted letters the Polish nation
was designated as _gens barbara et gens inepta_. "I do not think that
the said letter was really written by the said ambassadors, who were
statesmen too politic to employ such unguarded language," very
ingeniously writes the secretary of Montluc.

However, it was a blow levelled at the imperial ambassadors; while the
letter of the French bishop, composed "in a humble and modest style,"
began to melt their proud spirits, and two thousand copies of the French
bishop's letter were eagerly spread.

"But this good fortune did not last more than four-and twenty hours,"
mournfully writes our honest secretary; "for suddenly the news of the
fatal day of St. Bartholomew arrived, and every Frenchman was detested."

Montluc, in this distress, published an apology for _les Matinees
Parisiennes_, which he reduced to some excesses of the people, the
result of a conspiracy plotted by the protestants; and he adroitly
introduced as a personage his master Anjou, declaring that "he scorned
to oppress a party whom he had so often conquered with sword in hand."
This pamphlet, which still exists, must have cost the good bishop some
invention; but in elections the lie of the moment serves a purpose; and
although Montluc was in due time bitterly recriminated on, still the
apology served to divide public opinion.

Montluc was a whole cabinet to himself: he dispersed another tract in
the character of a Polish gentleman, in which the French interests were
urged by such arguments, that the leading chiefs never met without
disputing; and Montluc now found that he had succeeded in creating a
French party. The Austrian then employed a real Polish gentleman to
write for his party; but this was too genuine a production, for the
writer wrote too much in earnest; and in politics we must not be in a
passion.

The mutual jealousies of each party assisted the views of our
negotiator; they would side with him against each other. The archduke
and the czar opposed the Turk; the Muscovite could not endure that
Sweden should be aggrandised by this new crown;