[884] The letter is inserted entire in La Laboureur, Additions aux Mém. de Castelnau, i. 859-861. There is much in this letter that lends probability to Miss Freer's view (Henry III., i. 89) that Catharine had at this time begun to be opposed to an alliance which she feared might result in the diminution of her influence at court, and that she therefore "sought, by denying all that had before been conceded, and by proposing in lieu conditions which she knew Jeanne could not accept, to throw the odium of a rupture on the Queen of Navarre."
[885] The contract of marriage was signed at Blois, April 11th.
[886] Jehan de la Fosse (Journal d'un curé ligueur), 143, 144.
[887] See an interesting account of the Queen of Navarre's last days, her will, etc., in Vauvilliers, Hist. de Jeanne d'Albret, iii. 179-188.
[888] He is said already to have obtained the surname of "l'empoisonneur de la reine." Vauvilliers, iii. 193.
[889] Vauvilliers, Hist. de Jeanne d'Albret, ubi supra. Unfortunately for the "glove" theory, the Reveille-Matin des Massacreurs, written within the next year (see p. 172, Cimber and Danjou, "du mois d'aoust dernier passé"), makes Jeanne to have died in consequence of a drink (un boucon) given her at a festival at which Anjou was present. So in the Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi, 1574 (the same book virtually), Jeanne dies, "veneno in quibusdam epulis propinato, quibus Dux Andegavensis intererat, ut quidem mihi a domestico ipsius aliquo narratum est," i. 25, 26. The testimony of the physicians, who seem to have been unprejudiced, is given in a note in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, vii. 170, 171.
[890] It is said that Charles IX. suggested to him the propriety of this visit, accompanying the suggestion by the words: "I know that you are fond of gardening"—a sly reference to the occasion when Coligny, just before the explosion of the second civil war, was found by the royal spies busily engaged in his vineyards, pruning-hook in hand, and, by his apparent engrossment in the labors of the field, dispelled the suspicions of a Huguenot rising. It was ominous, according to these writers, that Charles should at this moment recall the circumstances of that narrow escape at Meaux from falling into the hands of the Huguenots. Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., ii. 6.
[891] "Estant nostre vouloir et intention le retenir près de nous pour nous servir de luy en nos plus graves et importans affaires, comme ministre digne, la vertu duquel est assez cogneue et expérimentée." MS. passport dated September 24, 1571, Biblioth. nat., apud Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, xvi. (1867) 220.
[892] Le Tocsain contre les massacreurs (orig. ed., Rheims, 1579), 77.
[893] Le Reveille-Matin des François et de leurs voisins. Composé par Eusebe Philadelphe Cosmopolite, en forme de Dialogues. A Edinbourg, de l'imprimerie de Jaques James. Avec permission. 1574. Apud Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, vii. 171. Dialogi Euseb. Philadelphi. Edimburgi, 1574, i. 26.