This was a concession which Henry of Navarre was neither willing nor indeed able to make, the inhabitants of the city being all rigid reformers who had not yet forgiven the young monarch either his enforced renunciation of their faith or his Catholic marriage; and accordingly the Queen had been compelled to avail herself of a small oratory in the castle which would not contain more than six or eight persons; while so anxious was the King not to exasperate the good citizens, that no individual was permitted to accompany her to the chapel save the immediate members of her household, and the drawbridge was always raised until she had returned to her own apartments.
Thus, the arrival of Marguerite in the country, which had raised the hopes of the Catholic portion of the population, by no means tended to improve their position; and for a time her co-religionists, disheartened by so signal a disappointment, made no effort to resist the orders of the King; but on the day of Pentecost, 1579, a few zealous devotees, who had by some means introduced themselves secretly into the castle, followed the Queen to her oratory, where they were arrested by Dupin the royal secretary, very roughly treated in the presence of Marguerite herself, and only released on the payment of a heavy fine.
Indignant at the disrespect which had been shown to her, the Princess at once proceeded to the apartment of her husband, where she complained with emphatic bitterness of the insolence of his favourite; and she had scarcely begun to acquaint him with the details of the affair when Dupin entered unannounced, and in the most intemperate manner commented on her breach of good faith in having wilfully abused the forbearance of the sovereign and his Protestant subjects.
It was not without some difficulty that Henry succeeded in arresting this indecent flow of words, when, rebuking Dupin for his want of discretion and self-control, he commanded him immediately to crave the pardon of the Queen for his ill-advised interference and the want of deference of which he had been guilty towards her royal person; but Marguerite refused to listen to any apology, and haughtily and resolutely demanded the instant dismissal of the delinquent.

In vain did Henry expostulate, declaring that he could not dispense with the services of so old and devoted a servant; the Princess was inexorable, and the over-zealous secretary received orders to leave the Court.
Marguerite, however, purchased this triumph dearly, as the King resented with a bitterness unusual to him the exhibition of authority in which she had indulged; and when she subsequently urged him to punish those who had acted under the orders of the exiled secretary, he boldly and positively refused to give her any further satisfaction, alleging that her want of consideration towards himself left him at equal liberty to disregard her own wishes.
Angry and irritated, Marguerite lost no time in acquainting her family with the affront which she had experienced; and Catherine de Medicis, who believed that she had now found a pretext sufficiently plausible to separate the young Queen from her husband, skilfully envenomed the already rankling wound, not only by awakening the religious scruples of her daughter, but also by reminding her that she had been subjected to insult from a petty follower of a petty court; and, finally, she urged her to assert her dignity by an immediate return to France.
Marguerite, whom the King had not made a single effort to conciliate, obeyed without reluctance; and, in the year 1582, she left Navarre, and on her arrival in Paris took possession of her old apartments in the Louvre.

She was received with great cordiality by Henri III, who trusted that her residence in France might induce her husband ere long to follow her; but he soon discovered that not even the warmth of his welcome could cause her to forget the past; and that, under his own royal roof, she was secretly intriguing with the Duc d'Alencon, who was once more in open revolt against him.
For a time, although thoroughly informed that such was the fact, his emissaries were unable to produce any tangible proof of the validity of their accusations; but at length, rendered bold by impunity, Marguerite was so imprudent (for the purpose of forwarding some despatches to the rebel Duke) as to cause the arrest of a royal courier, charged with an autograph letter of two entire sheets from the King to his favourite the Duc de Joyeuse,[16] who was then on a mission at Rome; when the unfortunate messenger, who found himself suddenly attacked by four men in masks, made so desperate an effort to save the packet with which he had been entrusted, that the _sbirri_ of the Princess, who had anticipated an easy triumph, became so much exasperated that they stabbed him on the spot.
This occurrence no sooner reached the ears of Henri III, than he sent to desire the presence of his sister, when, utterly regardless of the fact that they were not alone, he so far forgot his own dignity as to overwhelm her with the coarsest and most cutting reproaches; and not satisfied with expatiating upon the treachery of which she had been guilty towards himself, he passed in review the whole of her ill-spent life, accusing her, among other enormities, of the birth of an illegitimate son,[17] and terminated his invectives by commanding her instantly "to quit Paris, and rid the Court of her presence." [18] On the morrow Marguerite accordingly left the capital with even less state than she had entered it, for she had neither suite nor equipage, and was accompanied only by Madame de Duras and Mademoiselle de Bethune, her two favourite attendants.

She was not, however, suffered to depart even thus without impediment, for she had only travelled a few leagues when, between Saint-Cler and Palaiseau, her litter was stopped by a captain of the royal guard, at the head of a troop of harquebusiers: she was compelled to remove her mask; and her companions, after having been subjected to great discourtesy, were finally conveyed as prisoners to the Abbey of Ferrieres, near Montargis, where they underwent an examination, at which the King himself presided,[19] and wherein facts were elicited that were fatal to the character of their mistress.

Their replies were then reduced to writing; and Marguerite, who had been detained for this express purpose, was compelled by her inexorable brother to affix her signature to the disgraceful document; when, after she had been subjected to this new indignity, the daughter of Catherine de Medicis was at length permitted to pursue her journey; but she was compelled to do so alone, as her two attendants were forbidden to bear her company.
She had no sooner left Ferrieres than Henri III despatched one of the valets of his wardrobe to St.Foix, where the King of Navarre was for the moment sojourning, with an autograph letter, in which he informed him that he had considered it expedient to dismiss from the service of his royal sister both Madame de Duras and Mademoiselle de Bethune, having discovered that they were leading the most dissolute and scandalous lives, and were "_pernicious vermin_" who could not be permitted to remain about the person of a Princess of her rank.
Thus ignominiously driven from the Court of France, Marguerite, who had no resource save in the indulgence of her husband, travelled with the greatest speed to Nerac, where he was then residing, in the hope that she might be enabled by her representations to induce him to espouse her cause against her brother; but although, in order to preserve appearances, Henry received her courteously, and even listened with exemplary patience to her impassioned relation of the indignities to which she had been subjected, the coldness of his deportment, and the stern tone in which he informed her that he would give the necessary orders for a separate residence to be prepared for her accommodation, as he could never again receive her under his own roof, or accord to her the honour and consideration due to a wife, convinced her that she had nothing more to hope from his forbearance.
Even while he thus resented his own wrongs, however, Henry of Navarre no sooner comprehended that Marguerite had been personally exposed to insults which had affected his honour as her consort, than he despatched a messenger to the French King at Lyons, "to entreat him to explain the cause of these affronts, and to advise him, _as a good master_, how he had better act." [20] But this somewhat servile proceeding produced no adequate result, as his envoy received only ambiguous answers, and all he could accomplish was to extort a promise from Henri III that on his return to Paris he would discuss the affair with the Queen-mother and the Duc d'Alencon.
Unaware of the negotiation which was thus opened, Marguerite had, as we have said, lost all confidence in her own influence over her husband; and accordingly, without giving any intimation of her design, she left Nerac and retired to Agen, one of her dower-cities, where she established herself in the castle; but her unbridled depravity of conduct, combined with the extortions of Madame de Duras, her friend and _confidante_, by whom she had been rejoined, soon rendered her odious to the inhabitants.
In vain did she declare that the bull of excommunication which Sixtus V had recently fulminated against the King of Navarre had been the cause of her retiring from his Court, her conscience not permitting her to share the roof of a prince under the ban of the Church.[21] The Agenese, although Catholics and leagued against her husband, evinced towards herself a disaffection so threatening that her position was rapidly becoming untenable, when the city was stormed and taken by the Marechal de Matignon[22] in the name of Henri III.[23] Convinced that the capture of her own person was the sole motive of this unprovoked assault, the fugitive Queen had once more recourse to flight; and her eagerness to escape the power of the French King was so great that she left the city seated on a pillion behind a gentleman of her suite named Lignerac, while Madame de Duras followed in like manner; and thus she travelled four-and-twenty leagues in the short space of two days, attended by such of the members of her little household as were enabled to keep pace with her.
The fortress of Carlat in the mountains of Auvergne offered to her, as she believed, a safe asylum; but although the Governor, who was the brother of M.de Lignerac, received her with respect, and promised her his protection, the enmity of Henri III pursued her even to this obscure place of exile.
At this period even the high spirit of Marguerite de Valois was nearly subdued, for she no longer knew in what direction to turn for safety.
She had become contemptible in the eyes of her husband, she was deserted by her mother, hated by her brother, despised by her co-religionists from the licentiousness of her life, and detested by the Protestants as the cause, however innocently, of the fatal massacre of their friends and leaders.