Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/23

Rh up he was weak and sickly. His brother Henri despised and hated him and kept him a barely concealed prisoner as long as he could. Then Alençon revolted, gathered armies, founded a new Ultra-Royal party and moved on Paris. He even wished at one time to have his mother removed from the court, who was still carrying on her intrigues throughout the entire kingdom. They were obliged to negotiate with him and he succeeded in extorting an indemnity which was almost equal to a royal authority. He received five duchies and four earldoms and his court had the power of passing death sentences. He had a guard and a corps of pages in expensive liveries and conducted a brilliant court. We must try and picture him as Ranke describes him, ""small and stocky, of an obstinate bearing, bushy black hair over his ugly pock-marked face, which, however, was brightened by a fiery eye."

The book of Fair and Gallant Ladies is dedicated to Alençon, but he did not see it any more. Brantôme, however, must have begun it while he was still living. Alençon died in 1584 at the age of thirty-one."

Five years later Henri III. was stabbed by Jacques Clement. Thus the race of Henri III., which was apparently so fruitful, had withered in his sons. The remaining sister, who was inferior according to the Salic Law, was also extremely immoral.

Her husband, Henry IV., entered a country that was completely exhausted. The state debt at the time he entered upon his reign clearly showed the spirit of the previous governments. In 1560 the state debt was 43,000,000 livres. At the end of the century it had risen to 300,000,000. The Valois sold titles and dignities to the rich, squeezed them besides and were finally capable of mortgaging anything they could lay their hands upon. In 1595 Henri IV. remarked in Blois that "the majority of the farms and almost all the villages were uninhabited and empty." This mounting of the state debt clearly indicates the extent of the depravity of the court. During the reign of Charles IX. and Henri III., that