One word about that great man,—­a word that must tell, in the first instance, whence his fortunes took their rise.

His mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, great-aunt of Henri IV.  Of what avail is consanguinity?  He was, at this moment, aiming at the head of his cousin the Prince de Conde.  His niece was Mary Stuart.  His wife was Anne, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara.  The Grand Connetable de Montmorency called the Duc de Guise “Monseigneur” as he would the king,—­ending his letter with “Your very humble servant.”  Guise, Grand Master of the king’s household, replied “Monsieur le connetable,” and signed, as he did for the Parliament, “Your very good friend.”

As for the cardinal, called the transalpine pope, and his Holiness, by Estienne, he had the whole monastic Church of France on his side, and treated the Holy Father as an equal.  Vain of his eloquence, and one of the greatest theologians of his time, he kept incessant watch over France and Italy by means of three religious orders who were absolutely devoted to him, toiling day and night in his service and serving him as spies and counsellors.

These few words will explain to what heights of power the duke and the cardinal had attained.  In spite of their wealth and the enormous revenues of their several offices, they were so personally disinterested, so eagerly carried away on the current of their statesmanship, and so generous at heart, that they were always in debt, doubtless after the manner of Caesar.  When Henri III. caused the death of the second Balafre, whose life was a menace to him, the house of Guise was necessarily ruined.  The costs of endeavoring to seize the crown during a whole century will explain the lowered position of this great house during the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., when the sudden death of MADAME told all Europe the infamous part which a Chevalier de Lorraine had debased himself to play.

Calling themselves the heirs of the dispossessed Carolovingians, the duke and cardinal acted with the utmost insolence towards Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law of their niece.  The Duchesse de Guise spared her no mortification.  This duchesse was a d’Este, and Catherine was a Medici, the daughter of upstart Florentine merchants, whom the sovereigns of Europe had never yet admitted into their royal fraternity.  Francois I. himself has always considered his son’s marriage with a Medici as a mesalliance, and only consented to it under the expectation that his second son would never be dauphin.  Hence his fury when his eldest son was poisoned by the Florentine Montecuculi.  The d’Estes refused to recognize the Medici as Italian princes.  Those former merchants were in fact trying to solve the impossible problem of maintaining a throne in the midst of republican institutions.  The title of grand-duke was only granted very tardily by Philip the Second, king of Spain, to reward those Medici who bought it by betraying France their benefactress, and servilely attaching themselves to the court of Spain, which was at the very time covertly counteracting them in Italy.