[1725] Ibid., 817; L’Estoile, I, 46.
[1726] Claude Haton, II, 806-8.
[1727] C. S. P. For., No. 535.
[1728] Dr. Dale writes on February 28: “The Guises are nothing privy to the queen mother’s doings and she likes as evil of them.”—C. S. P. For., No. 634, February 28, 1576.
[1729] C. S. P. For., No. 592, January 1576: “The King of Spain makes the King very great offers to break the peace.”
[1730] Dr. Dale to Sir Thomas Smith and Walsingham. All the fair promises of the delivery of Bourges and La Charité are like to come to nothing, as may appear by the enclosed letter of Monsieur to the Court of Parliament. There is a secret League between Guise, Nemours, Nevers, Maine, and others of that house, together with the Chancellor, against all that would have any peace, and if it should be made, to begin a sharp war afresh (C. S. P. For., No. 583, anno 1576). From the first Languet was skeptical. He anticipated reaction (Epist. secr., I, Part II, 181, 205).
[1731] M. Frémy has published a work in which he makes the bizarre claim that the origin of the Académie française is to be at least remotely ascribed to Henry III (Les origines de l’Académie française. L’Académie des derniers Valois, 1570-1585, d’après des documents nouveaux et inédits, 1888. There is a review of it in the English Hist. Review, III, 576). Some one has said that “all the Valois kings were either bad or mad.” The aphorism would seem to apply to the character of Henry III, in both capacities. He was a mountebank, a roisterer, a dabbler in philosophy, a religious maniac, and a moral pervert. L’Estoile and Lippomano especially abound in allusions or accounts of him (e. g., Rel. vén., II, 237-39). Compare this account with the earlier observations of Suriano, ibid., I, 409, and Davila, VII, 442. On the “mignons,” Henry III’s favorites, see L’Estoile, I, 142, 143. Henry III’s very handwriting manifests his character: “Son écriture semble tout d’abord régulière, mais elle n’est pas formée, les lettres s’alignent sans s’unir, sans se rejoindre, certainement c’est une des écritures les plus difficiles à déchiffrer.... C’est l’homme qui s’y révèle l’indolent, l’efféminé monarque qui de son lit écrivait ces lignes à Villeroy: ‘J’ay eu le plaisir d’avoir veu vostre mémoire très bien faict comme tout ce qui sort de vostre boutique, mais il fault bien penser, car nous avons besoin de regarder de près à nos affaires. Je seray sitost là que ce seroit peine perdue d’y répondre. Aussi bien suis-je au lit non malade, non pour poltronner, mais pour me retrouver frais comme la rose.’”—La Ferrière, Rapport de St. Pétersbourg, 27.
[1732] See the remonstrance in C. S. P. For., No. 505, December 19, 1575.
[1733] Ibid., No. 584, January 9, 1576.
[1734] For particulars see Dale’s letter to Smith and Walsingham, ibid., No. 605, February 6, 1576; Claude Haton, II, 829.