Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/235

220 Henry of France certainly believed this, and he was strenuous in urging on the Bourbon marriage.

Meanwhile, the King of Navarre, too weak to openly oppose the plan, impotently tried to shuffle out of it. His nephew sent for him to Paris; but first he was detained at Pau by the affairs of Madame de Laval. Then he was ill, with a long intermittent illness which forced him to stay at home. Nobody believed much in these excuses, and at last the King of France got hold of his shuffling and irresolute opposer. Then the affair was quickly decided. The French King wrote to Montmorcncy, in letters that have something of the expression of his face after youth—something embittered, discordant, and cynical:—"I have got quit of him (the King of Navarre) cheaper than I thought. I grant him only 15,000 francs a year for the government of his kingdom. That is less than I offered him by Monge, for, if you remember, I had offered him ten thousand crowns. It is true there is no love lost between my good Aunt and her husband—never any couple were less united; and she already far from loves her son-in-law. The King of Navarre will swear by nothing but the allegiance that he owes me, and I trust his protestations just as much as I ought.  They are very poor. I don't believe that altogether they have ten gentlemen-in-waiting. The King has beseeched me to appoint him a lieutenant; I said I would think of it. It seems to me this is a very different thing from determining to choose one himself, as he used to declare. There is no further need that you should open the packets addressed to the King and Queen of Navarre. After all, there is nothing to make it worth your while. The King of