Bassompierre, the most dazzling of all the cavaliers of the day. The two
were betrothed.

But the love-stricken Henry, then confined to his bed with the gout, sent
for the chosen husband of the beautiful Margaret.

"Bassompierre, my friend," said the aged king, as the youthful lover
knelt before him at the bedside, "I have become not in love, but mad, out
of my senses, furious for Mademoiselle de Montmorency. If she should love
you, I should hate you. If she should love me, you would hate me. 'Tis
better that this should not be the cause of breaking up our good
intelligence, for I love you with affection and inclination. I am
resolved to marry her to my nephew the Prince of Conde, and to keep her
near my family. She will be the consolation and support of my old age
into which I am now about to enter. I shall give my nephew, who loves the
chase a thousand times better than he does ladies, 100,000 livres a year,
and I wish no other favour from her than her affection without making
further pretensions."

It was eight o'clock of a black winter's morning, and the tears as he
spoke ran down the cheeks of the hero of Ivry and bedewed the face of the
kneeling Bassompierre.

The courtly lover sighed and--obeyed. He renounced the hand of the
beautiful Margaret, and came daily to play at dice with the King at his
bedside with one or two other companions.

And every day the Duchess of Angouleme, sister of the Constable, brought
her fair niece to visit and converse with the royal invalid. But for the
dark and tragic clouds which were gradually closing around that eventful