The parties were now sharply defined.

Guise mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were prepared to do battle to the death.

The temporary "war of the amorous" was followed by the peace of Fleix.
Four years of peace again; four fat years of wantonness and riot preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.
The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau.

Henry's Spartan grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale.

For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons.