# Voltaire/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.
THE HENRIADE.
This seems the proper place for noticing his renowned poem, the "Henriade;" for though it had been finished some years, he was constantly retouching it, and now for the first time gave openly an edition to the world. One had been clandestinely printed, smuggled into Paris, and sold in 1724, by Voltaire himself—the official sanction, without which a book could not openly be published, haying been refused. A piratical one had also appeared,—published by that miracle of baseness the Abbé Desfontaines, who, after acknowledging, with servile protestations of gratitude, the deepest obligations to Voltaire, made it his constant business for years to vituperate him, and had caused the "Henriade" to be reprinted on his own account, adorned with passages of his own composition. It was to this scoundrel that a well-known retort was made. Excusing himself to the Minister of Police for one of his libels on Voltaire, he said, "I must live, you know." "I do not see the necessity," replied the Minister.
The number and importance of Voltaire's English friends enabled him to publish a quarto edition of his ​poem in England with uncommon success. It was dedicated to the queen; and the subscription, headed by the Princess Caroline, amounted to about two thousand pounds. This sum, it has been said and repeated by biographers, became, judiciously invested, the foundation of his fortune.
The great epics of the world may be counted on the fingers, and among these is the "Henriade." It was from the first hailed as the worthy representative of France in that very select assembly. The world of letters, and the most fastidious critics, agreed in recognising it as an extraordinary production, which placed its author among the first poets of his time. So greatly did Frederick of Prussia admire the "Henriade," that he took considerable pains to procure the publication of an elaborately-illustrated edition of it, which was never completed, but for which he wrote a preface, generally published with the poem, expressing his enthusiastic delight in the work and unbounded respect for its author. Much as the taste of the French people in poetry has changed since then, it continues to command high esteem as a principal modern classic, and to be issued in cheap editions.
Along with it Voltaire published essays on epic poetry, and on the most illustrious representatives of that province of song. In these, while distinguishing and allowing for the differences of national tastes, he censures renowned poets evidently with thorough honesty, but with more freedom than common opinion warrants: he finds Homer very imperfect in point of art, and accuses Milton of a great number of gross faults, as, for instance, the speech of Sin, the portress of Hell, which he calls "a disgusting and abominable history." He quotes passages ​from epics in various languages which, in his opinion, however justly admired, would not be tolerated in French poetry. Homer's deities, intoxicating themselves with nectar, and laughing immoderately at Vulcan's awkwardness, would, he tells us, no more be admissible in a modern French epic than Virgil's harpies carrying off the dinner. He notes Milton's expression "darkness visible" as a liberty which may be excused, "but French exactitude admits nothing that needs excuse." Besides this exactitude, he claims for French writers clearness and elegance: to them, he says, "the force of the English appears gigantic and monstrous on the one hand, and the sweetness of the Italians effeminate on the other." These and other passages of his essays greatly help foreigners to appreciate the "Henriade," which, like all his writings, possesses in the highest degree the characteristics that he thus attributes to the national poetry. We must expect here no vague sublimity of effect, no pregnant or allusive epithets, none of the homely reality which would be imparted by such familiar touches as would be deemed vulgar in a serious French poem—and to which he so gravely objects in Homer and Shakespeare—and none of the involuntary strokes which paint the manners of an age. Excellent sense, conveyed in the most perfect form of expression, a vigour and confidence which prevent him from ever falling ignominiously beneath the height to which his argument may conduct him, and the completeness with which he has overcome the exceptional difficulties of French verse, form the chief elements of his success.
Fired with the audacity of a young man who is conscious of splendid powers and wants to make them felt, ​he appears to have proposed to himself to produce an epic which should combine the positive merit of being essentially national with the negative one of avoiding what he had found to condemn in his illustrious predecessors. The personage whom he chose as the central figure was the best fitted for his purpose that French history could furnish. Never had the nation a hero so enduringly popular as the skilful general and brilliant knight whose white plume is a point of light in history—the conqueror who was clement amid the merciless, generous in an age of rapacity, genial in an atmosphere of bloody fanaticism—the good king who wished to see the day when every French peasant should have his fowl in the pot. He was, indeed, an apostate, so far as apostasy may consist in exchanging one form of Christianity for another; but the change was essential to the interests of his country, for his faith formed the sole objection which his Catholic subjects could urge against a king whose rule afforded the strongest security against anarchy, and the surest pledge of national prosperity. The recording angel who took so indulgent a view of Uncle Toby's oath, would scarcely use very dark characters in inscribing on his accusing page Henry's change of religion. It is true, too, that he was noted for his weakness for the fair sex; but so far as this affects his qualification for an epic hero, it wore in him a venial, even a gay and gallant, aspect, when compared with the amours of Achilles or Æneas. While his character thus presented no fatal objections, its intrinsic virtues received uncommon prominence from contrast with such atrocious blots of history as are his royal contemporaries. The abominable beldame Catherine of Medicis—her miscreant sons, Charles IX. ​and Henry III.—Pope Sixtus V.—and Philip II. of Spain, one of the gloomiest of remorseless tyrants,—such were conspicuous among the chief personages of the time. Henry was a witness, almost a victim, of what is one of the most horrible crimes in history, in which queen-mother, king, and princes took part, and of which the Pope heartily approved; and living in an atmosphere of domestic treachery and murder, with a Reine Margot for a wife, and her mother and brothers, together with the infamous crew who formed their Court, for associates, it is astonishing that he should have preserved an ordinary share of the better feelings of humanity, and almost a miracle that he should have continued to show himself so manly and so sound of heart.
Upon the death of Charles IX., his successor Henry III. found two great parties opposed in France; that of the Huguenots, headed by Henry of Navarre—and that of the Guises, called the Holy League, which, encouraged by the Pope and supplied with auxiliaries by Spain, sought, under the veil of zeal for the Catholic faith, to supplant the king. Henry III., the "Valois" of the "Henriade," at first declared himself at the head of the League, but found that he was likely to be only a tool in the hands of the able and unscrupulous chief of the Guises. With the best reasons for distrusting each other, they took the sacrament together in solemn pledge of mutual faith—Guise, as he bent reverently over the sacred bread, planning the dethronement of Henry, who, in turn, was meditating the assassination of the other communicant. In this rivalry of treachery Valois prevailed, and caused Guise to be murdered in his presence at Blois—whose fate might be more commiserated had he not ​himself murdered, with cireumstances specially atrocious, the Admiral Coligny. The king thereupon made common cause with the great enemy of the League, Henry of Navarre. Joining forces, they encamped before Paris, which Guise's brother, the "Mayenne" of the poem, now the chief of the League, held with his troops; and it is at this point that the "Henriade" opens.
The tone of those essays of Voltaire of which we have spoken gives promise of such independence of treatment, that the reader of them is somewhat surprised to find how many close imitations of Homer and Virgil his epic exhibits; and that, in fact, it would never have existed in its present form but for the ancient poets. The resemblance which the relations subsisting between his chief characters bear to the relations of those of the older epics need not be much insisted on, for they involve no deviations from history. If the king, ostensible chief of the besieging forces, plays in some degree Agamemnon to the Achilles of Bourbon, their real champion and leader—if Mornay, like Ulysses, brings all the weight of his wisdom to withdraw the hero from the silken toils of pleasure to the duties of the field—if D'Aumale, the prop of the beleaguered city, renowned in arms, having an inextinguishable thirst for battle, and always ready to undertake a champion of the enemy, resembles Hector in his life as well as in the fate, disastrous to the defenders, which he meets before the walls,—the answer is, that all these personages are represented as they really appeared in the war. But in other cases this kind of warrant does not exist. Just as the events which have preceded the opening of the "Æneid" are made known to the reader through Æneas's recital of them to Dido, so the incidents ​which led up to the situation with which the "Henriade" begins are recounted to Queen Elizabeth by Henry, who, like the Trojan chief, enlists the sympathies of his listener, though not with the same result; and this imitation has not the sanction of historical fact. Again, Henry, like the Trojan hero, and like Ulysses, accomplishes the descent into hell, and, like Dante, visits heaven. The fight between Turenne and D'Aumale, which did not really happen, very much resembles that between Turnus and Æneas. Then there is a prophet and a palace of Destiny to connect, as Virgil's Sibyl does, the present of the poem with the future; there are personifications more or less fantastic, as personages having only such allegorical existence must be. Besides a palace of Destiny, there is a temple of Love, with its votaries; and, lastly, Truth herself descends from the skies to visit Bourbon’s camp. In strange association with these, the Father of the Universe appears, like a Christian Jupiter, on more than one occasion, and vouchsafes utterances which shake the spheres.
Voltaire, without denying that these are imitations, would probably have considered that they needed no defence. He might think it of small importance that some parts of his machinery were borrowed, provided he turned them to good account. His royal admirer Frederick asserts, indeed, in his preface, that the French poet has imitated the ancients only to surpass them. "If," says the illustrious critic, "he imitates in some passages Homer and Virgil, it is, however, always an imitation which has in it something original, and in which one sees that the judgment of the French poet is infinitely superior to that of the Greek. Compare ​Ulysses' descent into hell with that of the seventh canto of the "Henriade," and you will see that the latter is enriched with an infinity of beauties which M. de Voltaire owes only to himself." Without going the whole length of this comparison, we may admit that it is not altogether devoid of justice.
The peculiar difficulty of Voltaire's task lay in the introduction of supernatural personages and events into times so recent as the period of the wars of the League. There were old men living when Voltaire was born who came into the world before Henry IV. quitted it. To bring Truth, and Discord, and divine personages, on so modern a stage, was more than audacious. Nevertheless, if we can get rid of the feeling of incongruity, we find that they fulfil important parts in the plan. Discord, for instance, supplies a link between the fanaticism and intrigue which prevailed at Rome and the state of feeling which actuated the Leaguers in Paris, and brings personages and events into relation with the main action whose appearance would otherwise have remained unaccounted for. It was Voltaire's object, by all means, to exalt out of the sphere of common life the fabric of his poem—likelihood was of small account with him compared with unity and artistic completeness; and viewed in this way, we must allow that the business of the epic has been as well managed as was possible under the circumstances.
Moderate in length compared with some of its predecessors, the "Henriade" contains between four and five thousand lines, divided pretty equally into ten books. It is written, like his tragedies, in rhymed Alexandrines—a kind of verse common in French poetry, but to ​English ears unmusical, halting, and monotonous; and, accordingly, the twelve-syllable line has seldom been used among us except to close the Spenserian stanza. The passages selected for translation will be given in this volume in blank verse, which—because it is more pleasing to our ears, and more suitable to our notions of an epic, and also because Voltaire's lines lend themselves to it with peculiar facility—does more justice, perhaps, than any other measure would to the poet; but it may be well to give the first few lines forming the exordium of the poem, in a fashion which endeavours to convey the sound as well as the sense of the original:—
"That hero's praise I sing who lord of France did reign, In right of his good sword and of his royal strain, Who wise the State to rule, by long misfortune taught, Stilled faction, and forgave the foe who mercy sought, O'erthrew Mayenne, with Spain's and League's combined array, And, master of the realm, ruled with paternal sway."
Henry of Valois, in his camp before Paris, despairing of success against the League, entreats Bourbon to seek aid from Elizabeth, trusting to the renown and the persuasions of his envoy to make a friend of our great Queen. Bourbon departs accordingly, and, approaching our coast, is driven by a storm to Jersey, where he meets with a venerable hermit, who prophesies that he will be victorious, and will ascend the throne, and gives him very pious and excellent advice respecting the use he should make of his victory. Henry then resumes his voyage; and it will probably propitiate English readers to translate the description of our country under Elizabeth as Henry saw it:—
"He, viewing England, secretly admires The happy changes in that powerful realm, Where the abuse of many a wholesome law Long wrought mischance to subjects and to kings. Upon that soil, so stained with noble blood— Upon that throne, whence kings so oft had slipt,— A woman at her feet held fate enchained, Dazzling all eyes with splendours of her reign. This was Elizabeth, whose potent will, Now up, now down, the scales of nations swayed, And made the sturdy Briton love her yoke. Her people in her time forgot their woes: The plains are covered with their thriving flocks, Fields with their wheat, and with their ships the deep. Feared on the land, their empire is the sea; Their navy, in its pride, holds Neptune slave, And summons Fortune from the ends of space. Their capital, once barbarous, has become The shrine of art, the storehouse of the world, The temple of great Mars. Within the walls, Of Westminster three powers combined appear, Astonished at the tie which holds them close— The people's deputies, the lords, the king— Of interests diverse, but made one by law,— All sacred parts of that unconquered whole— Self-menacing, to neighbours terrible. Much blest whene'er the people, dutiful, In reverence hold the rights of sovereign power, More blest whene'er a king, wise, gentle, just, In reverence holds the people's liberties. 'Ah!' Bourbon cried, 'when shall my countrymen, Like you, find truest glory in sweet peace? Take pattern here, O monarchs of the earth! A woman's hand has closed the gates of war, And, leaving woe and strife to you, has made The happiness of these, her worshippers.'"
Henry has an interview with the queen, in which he ​sets forth the need of France for help; and, at her desire, he relates the tale of the recent misfortunes of his country, their origin, and the particulars of the massacre of St Bartholomew. This narrative occupies the second canto, which Voltaire is said to have composed entirely in the Bastille, retaining it in his memory, and which alone he found no occasion to revise.
In the third canto the oral history of precedent events is contained, including the wars of the League, the death of Charles IX., the murder of Guise, and the reconciliation of the two Henries, thus bringing matters down to the time of the interview. Elizabeth, in a gracious reply, such as she might be expected to make to so gallant a prince, promises men and money—influenced, however, rather by the desire to injure Philip of Spain than to help Valois; and this promise she redeemed by despatching Essex at the head of a considerable body of her troops to join in the siege of Paris.
In the fourth canto we return to the besiegers' camp. Valois finds himself helpless without Bourbon—the Leaguers, issuing from the gates of Paris, dismay him by their rapid successes. In these sallies one leader is conspicuous—the Hector of the League—who is thus described:—
"Of all those champions, he whose valorous deed Inspired most dread, spread horror widest round— Proudest of heart and deadliest of hand— 'Twas thou, young prince, impetuous D'Aumale! Born of Lorraine's rich blood, whence heroes spring— Of kings, of laws, and of dull rest the foe! The flower of all the youth his constant train, With them he unrelaxing scours the field, ​Invading at all points the startled foe,— Now in dead silence, now with battle-cry, In sunshine or 'mid shadows of the night. So, from Caucasian cliff or Athos' peak, Whence far away are seen cloud, land, and sea, Eagles and vultures on extended wings Cleave in their rapid flight the wastes immense, Harry in fields of air the fluttered tribes, In woods and meadows rend defenceless flocks, And to dread summits of their mountain-home, Blood-stained, bear off the torn and shrieking prey."
D'Aumale had already penetrated to the tents of Valois, the surprised besiegers giving way before him, when Bourbon, just landed from England, came on the field:—
"Then in the midst of them was Henry seen, Flashing like lightning at the tempest's height. To the front ranks he flies and leads them on, Death in his hand, his glances thunderbolts; As bravely followed, he retrieves the day, And all the rallying chiefs around him throng."
The Leaguers are repulsed. D'Aumale, trying to rally them, is in danger, when an unexpected auxiliary appears. Discord, "the daughter of Hell," arrives in person on the scene, and dreading the loss of so devoted an adherent of herself, covers him with her shield, and withdraws him within the walls of Paris. She then flies to Mayenne, and addressing him as "Thou, bred under my eyes, formed under my laws," bids him be of good cheer. Creating a storm which checks the advance of the Royalists, she hurries on its wing to Rome, where she has an interview with another allegorical personage, Political Intrigue (la Politique), "daughter of Selfishness ​and Ambition, of whom are born Fraud and Seduction." It is here that the poet takes the opportunity to deliver his opinion on Sixtus V., the Pope of that day:—
"Under her consecrated tyrants, Rome Regretted her false gods… . . . . . . . "Sixtus was chief of Rome and of the Church. If to be honoured with the title "great," Lies, truculence, austerity, suffice, Among the greatest kings must Sixtus rank. To fifteen years of fraud he owed his place— So long he hid his merits and his faults, Seemed to evade the rank for which he burned, While self-abasement helped him to the prize."
Up to this point readers of the "Henriade" will proceed with pleasure, enjoying its good sense, its spirit, and the clearness and vigour of the poetry. But they will generally lament the introduction of these allegorical actors, who employ themselves, like the partisan deities of Homer, in sowing dissension, instigating crime, and interfering to protect those of one party, or to injure or tempt those of the other, but without the individuality and picturesqueness of the Olympian powers. All they do could have been done, with equal advantage to the plot, by a malignant spirit (like Goethe's Mephistopheles), the emissary of the powers of evil, who might have been represented as the insidious, unseen prompter of passions, words, and actions. Being thus the personification only of the evil tendencies of the actors themselves, such an addition to the dramatis personæ, if skilfully managed and rendered vague, shadowy, and mysterious, could have helped to exalt the characters and scenery into an unfamiliar and supernatural atmosphere, ​without doing such violence to belief as we have to complain of when we find these very abstract and unsubstantial conditions of social existence bodied forth with features, looks, and garments, taking part in battles, appearing in chariots, and inspiring courage or fear by actual words. Discord, greeting La Politique with "a mysterious air" and a "malignant laugh," flatters and caresses her. Together, they surprise Religion (another personification), and despoil "their august enemy" of her garments—disguised in which they proceed to the assembly of sages in the Sorbonne, where they create confusion and inspire wild counsels:—
"Then, in the name of all, one dotard cries— 'The Church makes kings, absolves them, chastens them; In us this Church, in us alone its laws: Valois, judged reprobate, no more is king— Of oaths once sacred now we break the bonds.' Scarce had he ceased when Discord, void of ruth, Writes down in blood this hateful ordinance; Each swears by her, and signs beneath her eye."
The effect of the decree is seen presently, when all the priests issue from their cloisters, with arms and standards, chanting sedition—"audacious priests, but futile men-at-arms." Representatives from the different quarters of Paris join the tumult:—
"Fury and treason, arrogance and death, March at their head through rivulets of blood: Born in obscurity, in squalor nursed, Hatred of kings their sole nobility;
they threaten the Senate, which still fulfils its functions in the name of the king, and seize the principal members.
Discord next proceeds to give effect to the decree of ​the Sorbonne by instigating the fanatical monk, Jacques Clement, to get out of Paris and murder the king. In the fifth canto is described how Discord summons, from the infernal abodes, the demon of fanaticism, who conducts the monk to his victim. The poet describes the last moments of the king, at which Bourbon, his successor, was present—
"Already Valois touched on his last hour, His eyes perceiving but a fading light; Around him, weeping, stood his courtiers ranged, Parted in secret by divergent aims, But pouring in one common voice their grief. Some, trusting in the good a change might bring, Mourned faintly for their dying monarch's fate; Others, enfolded in their selfish fears, The loss of fortune, not of sovereign, wept. Amid this clamorous hubbub of complaint 'Twas Bourbon who alone shed genuine tears; Valois had been his enemy, but souls Like his at such a time their wrongs forget Nought but old friendship weighed with Henry then; In vain his interests 'gainst his pity strove, The honest hero’s thoughts were far away From what the king's death gave—a kingly crown. By a last effort Valois turned on him The heavy eyes which death was soon to close Placing his hand on those victorious hands, 'Ah, leave,' he cried, 'those generous tears unshed! The outraged universe should mourn your king, But you must fight, my Bourbon, reign, avenge. I die and leave you in the midst of storms, Cast on a strand all covered with my wreck. My throne awaits you, yours my throne should be— Enjoy the prize your arm has guarded well; But think how ceaseless storms environ it, And fear the Giver as you mount the seat. ​O may you, of your dogmas disabused, His worship and His altars raise again! Farewell—reign happy—may a stronger power Protect your life from the assassin's steel. You know the League, you see what blows it strikes, That aim, through me, to reach your bosom too. The day may come… a still more barbarous hand… Just heaven! O spare the earth a soul so rare!… Permit… ' but at these words death, pitiless, Comes rushing on his head, and ends his lot."
In the camp Bourbon is hailed as king; in the city the Leaguers assemble to choose a monarch. Whilst they are occupied in their deliberations (in which Potier, a citizen, by his assertion of Bourbon's rights in the very presence of Mayenne, earns for himself an immortal niche in the poem), they are startled by a sudden call to arms. Henry has chosen that moment to direct an assault upon the walls:—
"Bourbon employed not those propitious hours In rendering funeral honours to the king, In decking forth his tomb with titles brave Which living pride upon the dead bestows; Not by his hand those desolated shores Were cumbered with the pomp of sepulchres, Whereby, despite the strokes of time and fate, The arrogance of rank prevails o'er death: He thought to send the Valois in his grave Darksome a tribute worthier of his shade, Punish his murderers, his foes confound, And o'er the land subdued spread happiness."
The attack, in which the English auxiliaries, led by Essex, take part, "marching for the first time under our colours, and seeming astonished to serve our kings," is successful. The suburbs are taken; and Henry, excited ​by the combat, appeals to his soldiers to bring fire and sword to bear on the city itself, when he is checked by a supernatural interference:—
"Just then, from out the bosom of a cloud, A glorious phantom grew upon the sight; Its shape majestic, mastering the winds, Upon their wings came down towards the king. Of the Divinity the living rays Full on its brow immortal beauty shed."
This is the spirit of Henry's ancestor St Louis, who rebukes the fury of the assailants, and thus addresses the king:—
"'I am that happy king whom France reveres, Father of Bourbons, and thy father too. Louis, who lately combated for you; Louis, whose faith your alien heart neglects; Louis, who grieves for you, admires you, loves you. God will one day conduct you to his throne, In Paris, you, my son, shall conqueror tread, Not for your valour, but your clemency; 'Tis Heaven thus speaks by me, its messenger.'"
Then, seeing the king exposed to a terrible hail of missiles from the walls, the saint withdraws him from the combat and conveys him to Vincennes. St Louis continues to be an important actor in the rest of the epic, and with happy effect. The objections made to Discord, Truth, &c., do not apply to him. A sentiment common to all nations warrants the poet in assuming that a man's departed forefathers continue to bestow on him interest and protection; and there is a peculiar propriety in representing the great French hero as specially watched over by his sainted ancestor, to whom the Bourbons have always looked with veneration. "Son of St Louis," said ​the Abbé Edgeworth to Louis XVI. on the scaffold, "ascend to heaven!"
The seventh canto is in some respects the most remarkable. It opens by telling us that the infinite goodness of God has placed among us two beneficent beings, always lovable inhabitants of earth, supports in trouble, treasures in poverty; the one is Sleep, the other Hope. St Louis summons both to Henry. Sleep heard the call in his secret caves; softly he came through the fresh bowers; the winds were hushed at sight of him; happy dreams, children of hope, fluttered towards the Prince and covered him with olive and laurel, mixed with their own poppies. Then the sainted Louis, placing on the forehead of the sleeper his own diadem, exhorts him, saying that it is a small thing to be a hero or a king without a share of enlightening grace, and that, less to reward than to instruct him, he will show him the secrets of a more durable empire. He then invites him to fly with him to the bosom of God Himself.
Frederick the Great specially admired the device of taking Henry to heaven and hell in spirit, in his sleep, rather than in the body, as Æneas and Ulysses went. "The single idea," says the admiring monarch, " of attributing to Henry's dream what he sees in heaven and hell, and what is prognosticated to him in the temple of Destiny, is worth the whole of the 'Iliad;' for the dream brings all which happens within the rules of reality, whereas the journey of Ulysses into hell is devoid of all the ornaments which might have given an air of truth to the ingenious fiction of Homer."
Most readers will concur with Frederick so far as to consider it judicious to make the dream the medium ​through which the hero views the celestial and infernal scenery.
What they saw, transported thus to distant worlds, the poet boldly proceeds to describe; and we may see how, in taking this survey of the universe, he has been influenced by his study of the theories of Newton:—
"Death, the frightful daughter of Time, brings before him the inhabitants of our sorrowful world;" and, as they appear, the different priesthoods of the earth look in vain for the beings they had deemed divine. Everything being in a moment made clear to them, the dead hear in silence the eternal judgments. Henry dares not approach the throne whence are delivered the sentences "which so many of us presumptuous mortals try in vain to anticipate;" but nevertheless he cannot refrain from reasoning on what he sees:—;
This questioning receives from the throne itself, in accents of thunder, a reply which
Henry (so the voice says) is to beware of surrendering ​himself to his feeble reason. "God has made thee to love, not to comprehend Him; invisible to thine eyes, He is to reign in thine heart; He hates injustice, but pardons error, except voluntary error, which is punished."
The king is now conveyed to the regions of eternal sorrow. There, besides more allegorical personages suitable to the scene—such as Envy, Pride, and Ambition—he sees Jacques Clement, the murderer of Valois, still clutching his bloody knife. There he sees also tyrants and their insolent ministers undergoing retribution: but the Saint assures him that even these are not punished beyond their deserts, but only as a father punishes his children; that though the gifts of the Deity are infinite, His chastenings know bounds, and that He will not requite moments of weakness and fleeting pleasures with everlasting torment. The scene then changes to the abode of happy spirits, where he sees the just kings, wise ministers, and devoted warriors of France, including Joan of Arc, "shame of the English, of our throne the stay." And not these alone, for the palace of Destiny opens for him its hundred iron gates, showing him the great men of the future (among whom Voltaire gives an honourable place to his friend Marshal Villars) and the seer's own descendants. Henry exults to find one of these becoming king of Spain, but St Louis checks his transports by hinting how dangerous an honour this may prove to be; and with this the vision ends:—
The Leaguers, disheartened by Henry's successes, are about to receive important succour. Count Egmont, marching from the Netherlands with a strong force of Spanish cavalry, was approaching Paris to join Mayenne, who hoped, thus reinforced, to attack the king with advantage. Henry met them both in the open field, and the incidents of the battle and its results make up the eighth canto. The well-known words of Henry to his soldiers are embodied in the poem:—
Defeated on this famous field of Ivry, Mayenne and the Leaguers retreat into Paris. It was now that the victorious Bourbon gave notable proof of the generosity which was so conspicuous an element in his fine character. To the prisoners taken in battle he, on the spot, gave their liberty, telling them that they were free either to return to Mayenne or to join his own standard. At the same time he restrains his own troops from carnage:—
The prisoners join his ranks. The news of his victory spreads, and the Leaguers are almost in despair. Discord, knowing that with his triumph will come the end of her reign, resorts, in order to arrest his career, to a last stratagem, which forms the subject of the ninth canto.
It might be supposed that the solemn incidents, the celestial experience, and the divine counsel of the preceding canto would have fortified the king against such a disreputable device as that which the malignant Discord now had recourse to. She repairs to the temple of Love (which is full of allegorical personages), and rousing the deity from his bed of flowers, enlists him in her cause. Delighted with a mission so completely suited to him, he flies at once to the plains of Ivry, near which Henry was hunting. Love "felt at sight of his victim an inhuman joy; he hardened his features and made ready his chain,"—then commanding the winds to assemble the clouds, and to bring on night with thunder and lightning, he lit his flambeau to lead him astray:—
The "precipice" is the fair Mademoiselle d'Estrées, the "belle Gabrielle" of history, then a dweller in these woods:—
Throwing away his torch and his arrows, the god takes the form of a child, and approaching Gabrielle, tells her that the conqueror of Mayenne is at that moment near her:—
Forgetful of the claims of his Reine Margot, who had given him no great reason to be mindful of them, the too susceptible hero falls a very easy victim to the beauties of this fascinating maiden. Love, continuing to lend his treacherous aid, spreads enchanted bowers of myrtle, and throws over the whole region his powerful spell:—
Everything being thus satisfactorily accounted for, without detriment either to the heroism of the monarch or the modesty of the maiden (all blame for whatever may happen obviously resting with the supernatural powers who have so craftily brought them together), the pair are kept in the silken chains of the malignant deity, while the chiefs of the army wonder what has become of the general, and the soldiers, bereft of his leadership, seem already vanquished. In these critical circumstances, the Genius of France, summoned to the rescue by St Louis, interposes, and leads the prudent Mornay, "whose solid virtues were his only loves"—and who has, consequently, but small indulgence for the king's weakness—to the retreat of the enthralled monarch. The uncompromising sage, fixing on him, even in the very arms of Gabrielle, a sad and severe gaze, preserves a silence that must have been very embarrassing to the king, who at last breaks it by acknowledging his own fault and Mornay's devotion. The fair D'Estrées is left, fainting, to the protecting care of Love, and the errant monarch returns to his army.
​In the last canto the siege recommences. The respite has revived the courage of the Leaguers, but the king is impatient to finish his conquest. The fierce D'Aumale exhorts the garrison to sally and become the assailants. He tells them that "the Frenchman who awaits the attack is already half beaten;" but he fails to inspire them with his own courage, and at last issues alone from the gates to challenge a champion of the enemy. All Henry's chiefs are eager to meet him, but to the valiant Turenne is awarded the honour of the encounter; and he goes out to meet the foe, while the citizens flock to the ramparts, and the king's soldiers range themselves opposite to see the combat:—
The champions, who engage without armour, and with only swords for weapons, advance upon each other with few but characteristic words:—
Of the two warriors, D'Aumale shows himself in the fight the more eager, strong, and furious—Turenne the more skilful and restrained. While D'Aumale exhausts himself in vain efforts, the king's soldier fights calmly ​and dexterously, and, pressing on at the right moment, strikes down, with a mortal blow, the champion of the League. Extended on the sand, he still vainly menaces Turenne. His sword escapes from his hand; his looks grow wild with the horror of defeat; he raises himself, looks towards Paris, and falls dead. Mayenne, looking on, sees in the event the prognostication of his own approaching overthrow. Soldiers bear, with slow steps, the body within the walls:—
As the siege goes on famine seizes on the city, and this canto contains some horrible pictures of the extremities to which the unhappy people are reduced. Henry gives another signal proof of magnanimity by sending in supplies to his perishing enemies. But the people, led by the priests, still refuse to acknowledge him, and more of supernatural aid is necessary for his final victory. St Louis again appeals to heaven—Truth herself descends upon the tents of the king, and gives him clearer views. He perceives it to be his duty to profess the Catholic faith—thereupon the opposition of the League ceases, and he enters Paris amidst his now submissive subjects:—