Regularly as the deputies arrived, Mayenne went to each of them, saying
privately, "Gentlemen, you see what the question is; it is the very
chiefest of all matters (_res maxima rerum agitur_). I beg you to give
your best attention to it, and to so act that the adversaries steal no
march on us and get no advantage over us. Nevertheless, I mean to abide
by what I have promised them." Mayenne was quite right: it was certainly
the chiefest of all matters. The head of the Protestants of France, the
ally of all the Protestants in Europe--should he become a Catholic and
King of France? The temporal head of Catholic Europe, the King of Spain
--should he abolish the Salic law in France, by placing upon it his
daughter as queen, and dismember France to his own profit and that of the
leaders of the League, his hirelings rather than his allies? Or,
peradventure, should one of these Leaguer-chiefs be he who should take
the crown of France, and found a new dynasty there? And which of these
Leaguer-chiefs should attain this good fortune? A half-German or a true
Frenchman? A Lorraine prince or a Bourbon? And, if a Lorraine prince,
which? The Duke of Mayenne, military head of the League, or his uterine
brother, the Duke of Nemours, or his nephew the young Duke of Guise, son
of the Balafrc? All these questions were mooted, all these pretensions
were on the cards, all these combinations had their special intrigue.
And in the competition upon which they entered with one another, at the
same time that they were incessantly laying traps for one another, they
kept up towards one another, because of the uncertainty of their chances,
a deceptive course of conduct often amounting to acts of downright
treachery committed without scruple, in order to preserve for themselves
a place and share in the unknown future towards which they were moving.
It was in order to have his opinion upon a position so dark and
complicated, and upon the behavior it required, that Henry IV., then at
Mantes, sent once more for Rosny, and had a second conversation, a few