as this, however, it was obvious that a messenger must be found at once faithful, expert, and courageous; and such an one offered himself in the person of La Varenne, who without a moment’s hesitation offered his services to the King, and acquitted himself so dexterously of his self-imposed task that he succeeded, not only in procuring two interviews with the Spanish Council, but even an audience of Philip, without once exciting suspicion; and his arrival at Madrid had been so well timed that although a second courier was despatched in all haste by the League, to announce the capture of his predecessor, he was enabled to effect his return to France with the reply of the Spanish monarch, by which Henry and his ministers were apprised of the plans and pretensions of that potentate (Amelot de la Houssaye, Lettres du Cardinal d’Ossat, vol. ii. p. 17 note.) La Varenne was subsequently Master-General of the Post Office.

[280] Philippe de Mornay, Seigneur de Plessis-Marly, Governor of Saumur, was born in the year 1549, at Bussy, in the department of the Oise, of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother (Francoise du Bec), the latter of whom educated him in the reformed faith.  Having escaped the massacre of St. Bartholomew, he visited Germany, Italy, and England, and finally entered the service of Henri IV, while he was still King of Navarre, who sent him on a mission to Queen Elizabeth.  His science, his valour, and his high sense of honour, rendered him after the abjuration of the monarch the chief of the Protestant party, and caused him to be called the Huguenot Pope.  He sustained against Duperron, Bishop of Evreux, the famous conference of Fontainebleau, at whose close each of the two parties claimed the victory.  Louis XIII deprived him of his government of Saumur; and he died in 1623.  He had issue by his wife, Charlotte de l’Arbalete, widow of the Marquis de Feuquieres, one son (Plessis-Mornay, Sieur de Bauves), who was killed in 1605 while serving under Prince Maurice in the Low Countries, and three daughters, the younger of whom married the Duc de la Force.

[281] Mezeray, vol. x. pp. 254, 255.

[282] Bonnechose, Hist. de France, vol. i. p. 438, seventh edition.

[283] Bonnechose, vol. i. p. 438.

CHAPTER V

1605

Trial of the conspirators—­Pusillanimity of the Comte d’Auvergne—­Arrogant attitude assumed by Madame de Verneuil—­She refuses to offer any defence—­Defence of the Comte d’Entragues—­The two nobles are condemned to death—­Madame de Verneuil is sentenced to imprisonment for life in a convent—­A mother’s intercession—­The King commutes the sentence of death passed on the two nobles to exile from the Court and imprisonment for life—­Expostulations of the Privy Council—­Madame de Verneuil is permitted to retire to her estate—­Disappointment of the Queen—­Marriage of the Due de Rohan—­Singular