Henry M. Baird · 269 of 379

CHAPTER XI · Adroitness and success of Catharine.

Never had prince of the blood a finer opportunity for maintaining the right, while asserting his own just claims, than fell to the lot of Antoine of Navarre. The sceptre had passed from the grasp of a youth of uncertain majority to that of a boy who was incontestably a minor. Charles, the second son of Henry the Second, who now succeeded his older brother, was only ten years of age. It was beyond dispute that the regency belonged to Antoine as the first prince of the blood. Every sentiment of self-respect dictated that he should assume the high rank to which his birth entitled him, and that, while exercising the power with which it was associated, in restraining or punishing the common enemies both of the public liberties and of the family of the Bourbons, he should protect the Huguenots, who looked up to him as their natural defender. But the King of Navarre had, unfortunately, entered into the humiliating compact with the queen mother, to which reference was made in the last chapter. From this agreement he now showed no disposition to withdraw. The utopian vision of a kingdom of Navarre, once more restored to its former dimensions, still flitted before his eyes, and he preferred the absolute sovereignty of this contracted territory to the influential but dangerous regency which his friends urged him to seize. Besides, he was sluggish, changeable, and altogether untrustworthy. "He is an exceedingly weak person"—suggetto debolissimo—said Suriano. "As to his judgment, I shall not stop to say that he wears rings on his fingers and pendants in his ears like a woman, although he has a gray beard and bears the burden of many years; and that in great matters he listens to the counsels of flatterers and vain men, of whom he has a thousand about him." Liberal in promises, and exhibiting occasional sparks of courage, the fire of Antoine's resolution soon died out, and he earned the reputation of being no more formidable than the most treacherous of advocates. Sensual indulgence had sapped the very foundations of his character. It is true that his friends, forgetting the disappointment engendered by his recent displays of timidity, reminded him again of the engagements into which he had entered, to interfere in defence of the oppressed, of his glorious opportunity, and of his accountability before the Divine Tribunal. But their appeals accomplished little. Catharine was able to boast, in a letter to the French Ambassador at Madrid, just a fortnight after the death of Francis, that "she had great reason to be pleased" with Navarre's conduct, for "he had placed himself altogether in her hands, and had despoiled himself of all power and authority." "I dispose of him," she said, "just as I please." And to her daughter, Queen Isabella of Spain, she wrote by the same courier: "He is so obedient; he has no authority save that which I permit him to exercise." The apprehensions felt by Philip the Second regarding the exaltation of a heretic, in the person of his hated neighbor of Navarre, to the first place in the vicinage of the French throne, might well be quieted after such reassuring intelligence.