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wars and rumours of wars invaded this distracted land of France, the King had lost his genius for battle and adventure. A restless invalid, prematurely old, he was unable to control the fortunes of his kingdom. The hero of Marignano was no more, nor the chivalric captive of Pavia, whose noble and gently demeanour in misfortune had been the ideal of Europe. In their stead reigned this sad and superannuated man, consumed by his abscess, tormented with unrest, his kingdom ravaged by his enemies, his Church bewildered by heresy and fanatic suspicion, his Court split up into cliques and angry rivalries, himself the disregarded head of a waning faction.

No one at the Louvre could charm away the melancholy of the unhappy King. The proud and ardent Queen, too long insulted, was only nominally a member of her husband's Court. Shut in her own apartments, with her Spanish suite, her priests, and her confessor, she made of her presence-chamber a little Spain, decorous and fanatic, in which she strove to forget "this Court of France, where God knows how I am treated, and the manner in which the King has used