while among the attendants as one of themselves, found his way into the royal stables, where, while engaged probably in contriving to obtain a horse of his majesty's for his night's expedition, he met a menial who had been left in charge of a boat on the river. Entering into conversation, he induced the unsuspecting clown to ferry him across, and was thus placed in unhoped-for safety.

But neither the hazards of this most perilous journey, nor his own mental resources, were yet exhaust ed. As he had nearly reached Henry's quarters, he accidentally crossed the route of a large body of Romanist soldiery going to surprise a garrison commanded by M. St Gelais, a brave and intimate friend of his own. He resolved to postpone every thing to saving St Gelais. But how to give him warning was the difficulty. He took the bold chance of throwing himself in their way, and suffering himself to be taken prisoner. As a Huguenot, he might have been shot or hanged at the moment, but his good fortune prevailed, and he was ordered to march with the troops. With this order he gladly complied; marched all day, and at night made his escape through the vanguard to the garrison. All were instantly on the alert, and when the assailants arrived, St Gelais gave them a desperate reception, and defeated them, D'Aubigné fighting among the foremost, and contributing nobly to the defence of his fellow Protestants.

The war rapidly began to assume a more decided form. In March 1577, the League was authoritatively published, whereby all who signed it were pledged "to suffer no religion but the Romish to exist within the borders of France." The armies on both sides now mustered, but their equality of force prevented general movements. The enterprises of the partisan troops on both sides were more active than ever. The town of Marmonde, well garrisoned and strong, seemed to D'Aubigné and La Noué worth a conquest. But here their known gallantry felt the common caprice of military fortune. The garrison was found to be three times the number of the besiegers, and the attempt failed after some daring efforts. D'Aubigné signalized himself in this unlucky affair not

more by his bravery than by its romantic spirit. On his advance, at the head of his men, to storm the rampart, perceiving that he was the only one who wore brassets, a piece of armour to protect the arms, he took them off, and flung them away, that he might have no advantage over his comrades. And afterwards, in the heat of the mêlée, while he was actually engaged sword in hand with one of the enemy, seeing that a bracelet of his mistress's hair, which he wore on his left arm, had taken fire from the discharge of a musket. shot which had touched him, he threw his sword into his left hand, that he might save the bracelet with his right, and thus left his life at the mercy of his enemy; he, however, escaped, and added this laurel to his chivalry.

His talents were now to be tried in another direction. A striking peculiarity of this great civil war was the constant mixture of negotiation with arms. While acts of desperate violence were constantly committed, an underhand and not less difficult struggle of minds was carried on in the attempts to detach eminent persons from either side. The Marshal D'Amville, who carried with him the influence of the house of Montmorenci, was now the object of the royal party. He had long adhered to Henry, but his being a Roman Catholic gave strong hopes of his desertion. The King of Navarre selected D'Aubigné for the delicate task of sounding him. The negotiator was still but twenty-seven years old; but he was already an old counsellor, and Henry made his choice in full knowledge of his abilities. The whole negotiation was one of the most dangerous and dexterous even of French intrigue, and might serve as a model of address and promptitude. D'Aubigné set out, bearing, as his ostensible commission, some orders relative to a meeting of the Protestant deputies with the marshal; but with the more important orders to obtain from him a pledge under his hand of his fidelity to the Huguenots, to induce him to put his army in march for Auvergne, and to send the King of Navarre some contribution to his On narrow finances for the war. D'Aubigné's arrival at Thoulouse,

ແ

his first object was to avoid being taken before Cornusson, the Royalist governor. This he effected by adopting the jargon of an Italian courier belonging to the Queen-Mother's establishment. Thus passing undiscovered into the city, he happened to alight at an inn, where he found an old gentleman of the marshal's suite, who enquired the news from the court, and with the garrullity of old age talked a great deal in return. The adroit envoy immediately formed his plan to extract all the old counsellor's knowledge, and after amusing him with stories of the court, made a confident of him; saying, in a tone of peculiar serious ness, that, from what he had just heard, he was afraid his journey was made in vain.' The old man asked the reason. "To say the truth," was the reply, "I have been commissioned by the Queen Mother to treat with the marshal on some rather important matters; but from what I hear, he is on the point of a new arrangement with the heretics. In these circumstances, of course, nothing is left for me but to return without another word." The old gentleman, now doubly gratified wth a diplomatic secret, and anxious that a royal negotiation should meet no impediment which he could take out of its way, begged of D'Aubigné to avoid this precipitate movement, and assured him that he was totally mistaken in his notions of the marshal's inclination for the Protestant side. But his hearer was not to be easily convinced, and they continued to argue, until he had roused the giddy counsellor, in the ardour of controversy, to disclose all he knew, and give a succession of irresistible proofs of the marshal's actual adherence to the royal party. On their separating for the night, D'Aubigné immediately sent a letter in cipher to Henry, acquainting him with the intended defection, and that D'Amville waited only to be enabled to signalize his treachery by giving up some of the Protestant fortresses, and thus render himself more im. portant to his new allies. He then left the city, to find out the Marshal himself, and obtain final proof of his perfidy.

Next morning the counsellor has tened to the governor's levee to

boast of what he had done in retarding the Queen's envoy the night before. But the governor had seen nothing of the envoy, and sh. dly suspecting that his old friend, who was now in high perplexity at his non-appearance, had been egregiously duped, put himself at the head of a troop of horse, galloped after D' Aubigné, and came upon him unexpectedly in one of the little towns on the road. The Duke de Joyeuse, governor of the province, was then at Corcassone, and there the prisoner was carried. On the way he gave the only specimen of his imprudence, but an imprudence which his daring spirit would have been at all times ready to commit. The troops beginning to insult the name of Henry and the Protestants, he called out that all and any of them who used such language were villains and liars, which so inflamed those rough fellows that he narrowly escaped with his life. When he was at last brought into the presence of the Duke de Joyeuse he found that it was Cornusson's intention to try him. The result would probably have been his death. But D'Aubigné, instantly darting forward out of the grasp of his guards, held out a letter to the duke, who advanced to receive it. De Joyeuse, well acquainted with his name, now desired that the enquiry should take place before himself, and an opportunity of defence being thus given, he dexterously and wittily answered the charges. As to his having passed through Thoulouse, without being discovered by Cornusson, he keenly said that the fault was the governor's, not his. That he was a Huguenot, and that it was no affair of his to teach Roman Catholic soldiers and officers their duty. This forbade all reply. On the talkative old gentleman's stories, he readily admitted that he had listened to a great deal which the counsellor very idly spoke, and had also learned that the Marshal D'Amville had not yet made up his mind as to his future proceedings. But if the old gentleman chose to talk of such matters, still it was no crime in any one else to let him have his gratification. This, too, was without answer. As to the insults offered to the troops, he loftily appealed to the national sense of honour, whether a friend

and soldier of Henry of Navarre should suffer opprobrious language to be used to a prince and soldiers whod fought so gallantly, and finned by saying, that, the moment he had delivered his despatches to the Marshal D'Amville, he was prepared to return, put himself into the hands of the King's lieutenant, and maintain his words with his sword. The defence was triumphant. Joyeuse treated him with the honour of a captain, and even gave him an escort to D'Amville.

When he arrived at the Marshal's quarters at Pezenas, difficulties thickened upon him. He found the Marshal Bellegarde already there, negotiating for the Court; the Huguenot deputies, sincere but uninformed men, ready to confuse every thing, and the Sieur Segur, Henry's ostensible agent, ready to believe every thing. His first act in this emergency was to examine the ground for himself. But this must require time, and his expedient to obtain it was as happy as any in the whole course of his diplomacy. Where every man round him was a spy, any attempt at soliciting formal permission to remain in the town would have nullified all his objects. He proceeded otherwise. Drawing up for himself a new letter of in structions, of the most trifling nature, he desired Segur to mention his name to the Marshal as a person of utter insignificance at Henry's Court. The presentation of his letter was still more effectual, and D'Amville, convinced of the truth of Segur's description, thought him entirely beneath his consideration. Thus he was suffered to remain in close watch of all his conduct, without being an object of any man's attention, and he took care to aid the idea, by joining eagerly in all the sports common to the young nobles surrounding the Marshal. But his nights were otherwise employed. He held conferences with the Huguenot deputies, and sent off constant despatches, to warn the Huguenot garrisons, which he, day by day, ascertained to be the intended objects of attack. Yet those were not all his difficulties. He at length found the deputies as in tractable as they were ill informed, and was in perpetual danger of seeVOL. XXXIX. NO. CCXLIII.

ing his best efforts traversed by their childish fears, or equally childish presumption. He further learned, that his information was doubted at the Huguenot headquarters, and that Segur's despatches to Henry were constantly full of confidence in the Marshal. Still he was not exhausted. He had only to try another resource. The employment of the sex in diplomacy has always been common in France, but his instrument on the present occasion, though one of the sex, must be acknowledged to have been of an unusual order. He had been casually introduced to a woman of fortune, of great talents, and highly respected by both sides, but strongly attached to the Huguenot cause. This was the celebrated Madame D'Usez, no part of whose celebrity could arise from her youth or beauty, for she was a hundred years old. But she had singularly retained her mental powers, and her natural ardour of heart. This extraordinary person undertook to discover the actual state of the royal negotiation, which she accomplished by engaging Marshal Bellegarde in an argument on the hazards of relying on the King's engagements; until she provoked him to the singular imprudence of actually showing her the royal instructions for his treaty with D'Amville. The old lady fixed them in her memory, while she read them; and, immediately on Bellegarde taking his leave, repeated them, the greater part word for word, to D'Aubigné, who carefully wrote them down, and reserved the document for his further operations. The occasion speedily arrived. Ascertaining that Bellegarde was confined to his chamber by indisposition, he paid him a visit; and after some cursory remarks, turning to him, gravely requested of him to give his honour that he would not disclose the author of the important intelligence which he was about to communicate. The Marshal gave his word. "Now, then," said D'Aubigné, "I have to tell you that your secret instructions are already divulged, and also that they are in my possession." He then pressed the astonished Marshal with the disgrace which he would bring on himself by involving D'Amville, his protector and early patron, in defection.

C

"Besides," added he, "the King never keeps an engagement; and, in consequence, you will have the dishonour of not merely degrading your friend by an act for which all France will cry out against you, but of making both him and yourself dupes to a faithless Court." The Marshal argued generally for a while against the idea of faithlessness on the King's side; but on his being asked, in the language of the instructions, whether the King would ever displace De Joyeuse, the Duke of Anjou, and others named in them, to make room for D'Amville's friends, the Marshal, urged to the utmost, pledged himself to the performance of each and all the conditions. D'Aubigné had now gained one point. But he still had two to carry; one was the direct communication of those promises to Henry, which alone would furnish irrefragable evidence; and the other was to retard the negotiation with D'Amville. The first he partially obtained by throwing out a hint, that Henry's poverty, and the general anxiety of his situation, might render him not unlikely to join in the treaty with the Marshal D'Amville, if the terms were fairly laid before him; and the next he fully obtained, through their unwillingness to obstruct so important a chance as that of bringing over the leader of the Huguenots, by any immediate hostilities. Thus the royalist arms were paralyzed, and an enterprise on foot countermanded. From Bellegarde he went to D'Amville himself; and on telling him that he was acquainted with the whole progress of the negotiation, the Marshal, finding deceit hopeless, promptly proposed that Henry should be applied to join him. While he thus harangued himself into the snare, D'Aubigné broke off the conference, and proposed in turn that they should settle every thing at an interview next day. During the night he sent Segur to acquaint the Huguenot deputies with his evidence, which they immediately sent off to their towns and leaders. It can be scarcely necessary to add, that the Marshal saw no more of the envoy, he having set off immediately with his intelligence to Henry, and leaving the marshals to reflect on their

having been completely outwitted by scarcely more than a boy.

This was an essential service; but in France all has been intrigue in every age, and D'Aubigné's successes only rendered him more obnoxious to jealousy, and still more strongly to the hatred of the very powerful party of Roman Catholics, who, under the name of Malecontents, had ranged themselves on the Huguenot side. Henry, unwisely afraid of losing the assistance of this important branch of his force, was compelled to dissemble, and thus exhibit coldness to some of his chief Protestant champions. D'Aubigné's open nature disdained to comprehend this subtlety, which was at all times too prominent in Henry's character, partly from his fondness for intrigue, and partly from his real negligence of religion; and this brave man at length withdrew altogether from a court where his merits were undervalued. But he was determined not to be idle, and went with some of his friends, offended like himself, to join the garrison of the fortress of Castel-jaloux, under Vachonniere, to whom he acted as second governor.

His activity was not formed to remain within walls, and he had scarcely entered the fortress, when he distinguished his presence by one of those acts of desperate, though frequently useless enterprise, which made the wars of the League so vivid, yet so wasteful of gallant blood. An expedition of eighty men was concerted for reconnoitering the neighbouring fortress of Mermande, and fighting whatever they might meet in their way. But un luckily the intention had either transpired, or been anticipated; for the Baron de Mauzevin, comman dant of the town, had already gathered reinforcements from the neighbouring garrisons, to such an amount, that he was enabled to place 750 musketeers in ambush on the road. D'Aubigné advanced with a party in front of fifteen horse, and as many foot, commanded by Captain Dominge. But on his reaching the banks of the Garonne, he was awakened to the hazards of his position, by seeing a large body of troops on the opposite bank, preparing to embark, and fall on his little expedition. But he was a tried