who had secretly attached himself to the cause of the Protestant
Princes.

This was another source of uneasiness to the Queen-mother, who
apprehended, from the pertinacity with which Marguerite clung to her
husband, that she would exert all her influence to effect an
understanding between the two brothers-in-law which could not fail to
prove fatal to the interests of the Duc d'Anjou, who, in the event of
the decease of Charles IX, was the rightful heir to the throne. Nor was
that decease a mere matter of idle speculation, for the health of the
King, always feeble and uncertain, had failed more than ever since the
fatal night of the 24th of August; and he had even confessed to Ambroise
Paré,[9] his body-surgeon, that his dreams were haunted by the spectres
of his victims, and that he consequently shrank from the sleep which was
so essential to his existence. The Duc d'Anjou meanwhile was absent at
the siege of Rochelle, while his brother, d'Alençon, was about the
person of the dying monarch, and had made himself eminently popular
among the citizens of Paris. The crisis was an alarming one; but it was
still destined to appear even more perilous, for, to the consternation
of Catherine, intelligence at this period reached the Court that the
Polish nation had elected the Duc d'Anjou as their King, and that their
ambassadors were about to visit France in order to tender him the crown.
In vain did she represent to Charles the impolicy of suffering a warlike
prince like Henri d'Anjou to abandon his country for a foreign throne,
and urge him to replace the elder by the younger brother, alleging that
so long as the Polish people could see a prince of the blood-royal of
France at the head of their nation, they would care little whether he
were called Henry or Francis; the King refused to countenance such a
substitution. He had long been jealous of the military renown of the Duc
d'Anjou; while he was also perfectly aware of the anxiety with which