"If it were necessary to lose my life in order to reap the proximate fruits of the states' good resolution," said Guise, "that is what I have quite made up my mind to.

Though I had a hundred lives, I would devote them all to the service of God and His church, and to the relief of the poor people for whom I feel the greatest pity;" then, touching the Duke of Elbeuf upon the shoulder, he said, "Go to bed, cousin;" and, taking away his hand and laying it upon his own heart, he added, "Here is the doublet of innocence." On the evening of the 22d of December, 1588, when Charlotte de Semblancay, Marchioness of Noirmoutiers, to whom he was tenderly attached, pressed him to depart, or at any rate not to be present at the council next day, the only answer he made her was to hum the following ditty, by Desportes, a poet of the day:-- "My little Rose, a little spell Of absence changed that heart of thine; And I, who know the change full well, Have found another place for mine.
No more such fair but fickle she Shall find me her obedient; And, flighty shepherdess, we'll see Which of the twain will first repent." Henry III.

was scarcely less disturbed, but in quite a different way, than the Duke of Guise.

For a long time past he had been thinking about getting rid of the latter, just as he had thought for a long time, twenty years before, about getting rid of Admiral de Coligny; but since the date of his escape from the popular rising on the day of the Barricades, he had hoped that, thanks to the adoption of the edict of union and to the convocation of the states-general, he would escape the yoke of the Duke of Guise.

He saw every day that he had been mistaken; the League, and consequently the Duke of Guise, had more power than he with the states-general; in vain had the king changed nearly all his ministers; in vain had he removed his principal favorite, the Duke of Epernon, from the government of Normandy to that of Provence; he did not obtain from the states-general what he demanded, that is, the money he wanted; and the states required of him administrative reforms, sound enough at bottom, but suggested by the Duke of Guise with an interested object, and calculated to shackle the kingly authority even more than could be done by Guise himself directly.