66 Exactly like myself, sire," he answered: "no one could have been more surprised than I was to meet M. de Montmorency at the gates of the Louvre; I believed him a prisoner in Antwerp." Henry bit his lips at this stern reply. "It is true he is returned, monsieur," said he; "but I have paid his ransom, and for two hundred thousand crowns I have had the pleasure of seeing an old servant and a faithful friend again." "Does your Majesty estimate at the value of only two hundred thousand crowns the cities you are surrendering, as I am assured, to England, Spain, and Piedmont? As you are surrendering very nearly two hundred, that would make only a thousand crowns a city." "I restore those cities, monsieur, not to ransom M. de Montmorency, but to purchase peace.' "I had believed until now that-in France, at least peace was purchased by victories." "It is because, being a Lorraine prince, monsieur, you know the history of France badly. Have you forgotten, among others, the treaties of Brétigny and Madrid?" "No, sire; but I did not believe there was identity or even resemblance between the situations. After the battle of Poitiers, King John was a prisoner in London; after the battle of Pavia, King François I. was a prisoner in Toledo. To-day, King Henri II., at the head of a magnificent army, is the allpowerful tenant of the Louvre. Why, then, renew, in full prosperity, the disasters of the fatal epochs of France?" "M. de Guise," said the king, haughtily, "have you calculated the rights I gave you when I named you lieutenant general of the realm?" "Yes, sire. After the disastrous battle of Saint-Laurent, after the heroic defense of Saint-Quentin, when the enemy was at Noyon; when M. de Nevers had only two or three hundred gentlemen around him; when affrighted Paris was flying through her broken barriers; when the king, from the highest tower of the château of Compiègne, was examining the Picardy road, determined to be the last to retire before the enemy, not like a king who must not expose himself to danger, but like a general, a captain, a soldier who guards a retreat, you called me, sire, and named me lieutenant of your realm. My right from that moment was to save France, which M. de VOL. XII. -9 - Montmorency had ruined. What have I done, sire? I have brought back to France the Army of Italy; I have delivered Bourg; I have torn the keys of your kingdom from the girdle of Queen Mary Tudor by recovering Calais; I have regained Guines, Ham, and Thionville; I have surprised Arlon, repaired the disasters of Gravelines, and after a furious war, have collected in the camp of Compiègne an army twice as numerous as it was at the time I took command. Was that one of my rights, sire?" "Undoubtedly, undoubtedly," stammered Henri, embar rassed. "Then your Majesty must permit me to say that I do not at all understand the question you have just addressed to me, 'Have you calculated the rights I gave you when I named you lieutenant general of the realm ?"" "I meant, M. le Duc, that among the rights which a king gives to one of his subjects, the right of remonstrance is rarely comprised." "In the first place," replied Duc François, with an inclination so slight and an affectation of courtesy so careless that it became impertinent, "I would take the liberty of drawing your Majesty's attention to the fact that I have not precisely the honor of being your subject; after the death of Duke Albert, the Emperor Henri III. gave the duchy of Upper Lorraine to Gerald of Alsace, first hereditary duke and founder of our house. I received this duchy from my father, and he from his. By the grace of God, what I received from my father I shall leave to my son. If great things may be compared with small, it is what you do, sire, with the kingdom of France." “Do you know, cousin," said Henri, wishing to give the conversation an ironical turn, "that what you have said inspires me with a certain fear?" "Fear of what, sire?" asked the duke. "Fear that France may one day have a war with Lorraine." The duke bit his lips. "Sire," he replied, "the fear is more than improbable; but if such a thing should happen, and, as a sovereign prince, I was forced to defend my patrimony against your Majesty, I swear to you it would be only on the breach of my last fortress that I should sign a treaty as disastrous as that to which you have consented." "M. le Duc !" exclaimed Henri, throwing back his head and raising his voice. "Sire," replied M. de Guise, "let me tell you what I think and what all of us think who belong to the noblesse. The authority of a constable is such, it is claimed, that in a case of extreme necessity, he may pledge a third of the kingdom. Well, without other necessity than that of leaving a prison of which he is tired, M. le Connétable costs you more than a third of your realm, sire. Yes, of your realm,- for I consider as of your realm all that conquered land of Piedmont which has cost the crown of France more than forty millions of gold, and the soil of France more than a hundred thousand of its children; for I consider of your realm those fine parliaments of Turin and Chambéry which, as well as many others, the late king, your lord and father, instituted there after the French manner; for I consider as of your realm all those fair Transalpine cities in which so many of your subjects had established their households and taken such root that gradually the inhabitants were abandoning their corrupted Italian, and speaking as good French as is spoken in Lyons or Tours." "Well," asked Henri, embarrassed at having to answer such arguments, "for whom do I abandon all this? For my father's daughter, for my sister Marguerite." "No, sire; you abandon it for Duke Emmanuel Philibert, her husband, your most cruel enemy, your most inveterate antagonist. Once married, the Princess Marguerite is no longer the daughter of the king your father; the Princess Marguerite is no longer your sister; the Princess Marguerite is Duchess of Savoy. Now, do you wish me to tell you what will happen, sire? This is what will happen: the Duke of Savoy will no sooner be restored to his dominions than he will tear up all your father has planted there; and this he will do so effectively that all the glory acquired by France in Italy during the last twenty-six or thirty years will be completely extinguished, and you may abandon forever the hope of conquering the duchy of Milan. And yet it is not that which disturbs my mind and afflicts my soul most; it is the fact that you offer such advantages to the lieutenant general of King Philip, to the representative of that Spanish house which is our most fatal enemy. Just think of it, sire! by means of the Alps, all the passes of which Emmanuel Philibert holds, Spain is at the gates of Lyons!-Lyons, which, before this peace, was in the center of your kingdom, and which to-day is a frontier city." "Oh, with regard to that matter," replied Henri, "you have no reason at all to be disturbed, cousin. Duke Emmanuel Philibert, in virtue of an arrangement made between us, passes from the Spanish service into ours. Should M. le Connétable die, his sword is promised to the Duke of Savoy." "And doubtless that is why," replied François de Guise, bitterly, "Duke Emmanuel Philibert took it from him in advance at Saint-Quentin?" Then as the king made an impatient gesture, "Pardon me, sire," continued the duke; "I am wrong, and such questions ought to be treated more seriously. So Duke Emmanuel Philibert is to succeed M. de Montmorency? So M. de Savoie is to hold in his hands the fleur-de-lis sword? Well, sire, take care that on the day you place that sword in his possession he does not use it as the Count of Saint-Paul did, who, like the Duke of Savoy, was also a foreigner, being of the house of Luxembourg. King Louis XI. and the Duke of Burgundy also made a peace one fine day, as you wish to do, or have already done, with the King of Spain; one of the conditions of this peace was that the Count of Saint-Paul should be Constable of France, and he was; but he was hardly constable when he began to treacherously support the Duke of Burgundy, his first master, and marched on from treason to treason, as may be read in the 'Memoirs of Philippe de Comines.'" "Good!" replied Henri; "since you refer me to the 'Memoirs of Philippe de Comines,' I am willing to base my answer on these Memoirs. What was the result of all the treasons of Saint-Paul? that he lost his head, was it not? Well, listen to this, cousin, on the first treason of Duke Emmanuel, I swear to you, and you hear this from my own lips, that he shall be dealt with exactly as was the Constable of Saint-Paul by my predecessor Louis XI. But, thank God! no such necessity will arise," continued the king. "Duke Emmanuel Philibert, far from forgetting what he owes us, will always have before his eyes the position we have made for him. Besides, we retain the marquisate of Saluces in the midst of his territories, as a mark of honor for the crown of France, and in order that the Duke of Savoy, his children and his posterity, may never forget that our kings formerly conquered and possessed all Piedmont and Savoy, but that, in favor of a daughter of France who married into their house, all these conquests and possessions on both sides of the mountains were restored, or rather made over as a gift, to the said house, to render it, by this boundless liberality, more obedient and devoted to the crown of France." Then as the king saw that M. de Guise did not seem to set a very high value on this marquisate of Saluces reserved to the crown of France, he added: "Moreover, if you will have the goodness to reflect on the matter, you must see as well as I that the seizure of the territories of the poor prince who was father of the present Duke of Savoy was a very tyrannical usurpation on the part of the late king, my lord and father; for he really had not any right at all on his side, and to banish a son in this way from the duchy of his father and strip him of everything, was surely not acting as a good Christian; and though I had no other motive than that of relieving the soul of the king my father from such a sin, I would restore to Emmanuel Philibert what belongs to him." The duke bowed. - "Well," asked Henri, "you do not answer, M. de Guise?" "Yes, sire. But since the excitement of your Majesty has led you to accuse even the king your father of tyranny, it is no longer, I who esteem King François I. a great king and not a tyrant,—it is no longer to King Henri II., it is to King François I. that I have to render an account of my conduct. Just as you have judged your father, sire, your father shall judge me; and as I believe the judgment of the dead more infallible than the judgment of the living, being condemned by the living, I appeal to the dead." Thereupon, approaching that fine portrait of François I. by Titian which is to-day one of the glories of the Museum of the Louvre, but which then was the chief ornament of the room in which this discussion took place, and which we have just related, with the object of proving to our readers that it was not the edge of the sword, but the fascinating graces of a woman which led to the signing of the fatal treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis, "O King François !" said the duke, "you who were armed by Bayard, and called the Knightly King,-a title that contained all the glorious characteristics of the kings your predecessors, you loved sieges and battles too much during your |