all the secrets of the state, as they could not, he averred, fail, under
existing circumstances, to be communicated to M. de Guise; and Charles
IX so fully appreciated the value of this advice, that he hastened to
urge the same caution upon the Queen-mother. This sudden distrust and
coldness on the part of her royal relatives was peculiarly irritating to
Marguerite; nor was her mortification lessened by the fact that the Duc
de Guise, first alarmed, and ultimately disgusted, by her unblushing
irregularities, withdrew his pretensions to her hand; and, sacrificing
his ambition to a sense of self-respect, selected as his wife Catherine
de Clèves, Princesse de Portien.[3]

At this period Marguerite de Valois began to divide her existence
between the most exaggerated devotional observances and the most sensual
and degrading pleasures. Humbly kneeling before the altar, she would
assist at several masses during the day; but at twilight she cast off
every restraint, and careless of what was due, alike to her sex and to
her rank, she plunged into the grossest dissipation; and after having
played the guest at a riotous banquet, she might be seen sharing in the
disgraceful orgies of a masquerade.[4] A short time after the marriage
of the Duc de Guise, the hand of the Princess was demanded by Don
Sebastian, King of Portugal; but the Queen-mother, who witnessed with
alarm the increasing power of the Protestant party, and the utter
impossibility of inspiring confidence in their leaders save by some bold
and subtle stroke of policy, resolved to profit by the presence of the
Huguenot King of Navarre, in order to overcome the distrust which not
even the edict of 1570 had sufficed to remove; and to renew the project
which had been already mooted during the lifetime of Jeanne d'Albret, of
giving Marguerite in marriage to the young Prince, her son.

The consciousness that she was sacrificing her daughter by thus