she not been beautiful, with pleasing and gracious manners, a great
fondness for society and music and poetry and art,--the most
accomplished woman of her day, and so attractive as to be compared by
the poets of her court to Aurora and Venus. Her life only shows how much
heartlessness, cruelty, malignity, envy, and selfishness may be
concealed by the mask of beauty and agreeable manners and artistic
accomplishments.

The bloody battle of Coutras enabled Henry of Navarre to take a stand
against the Catholics; but after the death of Henry III. by
assassination, in 1589, his struggles for the next five years were more
to secure his hereditary rights as King of France than to lead the
Huguenots to victory as a religious body. It might have been better for
them had Henry remained the head of their party rather than become King
of France, since he might not have afterwards deserted them. But there
was really no hope of the Huguenots gaining a political ascendency at
any time; they composed but a third part of the nation; their only hope
was to secure their religious liberties.

The most brilliant part of the military career of Henry IV. was when he
struggled for his throne, supported of course by the Huguenots, and
opposed by the whole Catholic party, the King of Spain, and the Pope of
Rome. The Catholics, or the "Leaguers" as they were called, were led by
the Duke of Mayenne. I need not describe the successes of Henry, until
the battle of Ivry, March 14, 1590, made him really the monarch of
France. On that eventful day both armies, having performed their
devotions, were drawn out for action. Both armies knew that this battle
would be decisive; and when all the arrangements were completed, Henry,
completely covered with mail except his hands and head, mounted upon a
great bay charger, galloped up and down the ranks, giving words of