Vidame de Chartres, the name under which he is known in history.  The secret hatred which Catherine bore to Diane was revealed in many ways, to which historians, preoccupied by political interests, have paid no attention.  Catherine’s attachment to the vidame proceeded from the fact that the young man had offered an insult to the favorite.  Diane’s greatest ambition was for the honor of an alliance with the royal family of France.  The hand of her second daughter (afterwards Duchesse d’Aumale) was offered on her behalf to the Vidame de Chartres, who was kept poor by the far-sighted policy of Francois I. In fact, when the Vidame de Chartres and the Prince de Conde first came to court, Francois I. gave them—­what?  The office of chamberlain, with a paltry salary of twelve hundred crowns a year, the same that he gave to the simplest gentlemen.  Though Diane de Poitiers offered an immense dowry, a fine office under the crown, and the favor of the king, the vidame refused.  After which, this Bourbon, already factious, married Jeanne, daughter of the Baron d’Estissac, by whom he had no children.  This act of pride naturally commended him to Catherine, who greeted him after that with marked favor and made a devoted friend of him.

Historians have compared the last Duc de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse, to the Vidame de Chartres, in the art of pleasing, in attainments, accomplishments, and talent.  Henri II. showed no jealousy; he seemed not even to suppose that a queen of France could fail in her duty, or a Medici forget the honor done to her by a Valois.  But during this time when the queen was, it is said, coquetting with the Vidame de Chartres, the king, after the birth of her last child, had virtually abandoned her.  This attempt at making him jealous was to no purpose, for Henri died wearing the colors of Diane de Poitiers.

At the time of the king’s death Catherine was, therefore, on terms of gallantry with the vidame,—­a situation which was quite in conformity with the manners and morals of a time when love was both so chivalrous and so licentious that the noblest actions were as natural as the most blamable; although historians, as usual, have committed the mistake in this case of taking the exception for the rule.

The four sons of Henri II. of course rendered null the position of the Bourbons, who were all extremely poor and were now crushed down by the contempt which the Connetable de Montmorency’s treachery brought upon them, in spite of the fact that the latter had thought best to fly the kingdom.

The Vidame de Chartres—­who was to the first Prince de Conde what Richelieu was to Mazarin, his father in policy, his model, and, above all, his master in gallantry—­concealed the excessive ambition of his house beneath an external appearance of light-hearted gaiety.  Unable during the reign of Henri II. to make head against the Guises, the Montmorencys, the Scottish princes, the cardinals, and the Bouillons,