HENRY IV. OF FRANCE 171 " Young man," said he, undisturbed, " you ought to respect my gray hairs ; but do as you please, you can only shorten my life a few days." Besme thrust him through in many places, and then threw his body, still breathing, out of the window into the court, where it fell at the feet of the Duke of Guise. The minions of the Louvre flocked around in hideous glee, to insult the lifeless form of him, before whom they had so long quailed and trembled. They gibbeted their own infamy in vainly seeking to dishonor the illustrious dead. His memory is at once the glory and the shame of France : and the very land of the St. Bartholomew is, to some extent, hallowed by having been the birthplace of Coligni, and the scene of his heroic career. I do not pause to describe the tardy homage which his countrymen after- ward paid to the name and relics of the fallen great. These obsequies and panegyrics may be looked on as some small expiation for the national guilt of France, but Coligni needed them not. HENRY IV. OF FRANCE (1553-1610) H ENRY iv., the most celebrated, the most beloved, and perhaps, in spite of his many faults, the best of the French monarchs, was born at Pau, the capital of Beam, in 1553. His parents were Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Venddme, and in right of his wife, titular king of Navarre, and Jeanne d'Albert, the heiress of that kingdom. On the paternal side he traced his descent to Robert of Clermont, fifth son of Louis IX., and thus, on the failure of the elder branches, became heir to the crown of France. Educated by a Protes- tant mother in the Protestant faith, he was for many years the rallying point and leader of the Huguenots. In boyhood the prince of Beam displayed sense and spirit above his years. Early inured to war, he was present and exhibited strong proofs of military talent at the battle of Jarnac, and that of Moncontour, both fought in 1569. In the same year he was declared chief of the Protestant League. The treaty of St. Germain, concluded in 1570, guaranteed to the Huguenots the civil rights for which they had been striving ; and, in appearance, to cement the union of the two parties, a marriage was proposed between Henry, who, by the death of his mother, had just succeeded to the throne of Navarre, and Margaret
