He stood at the lower end of the Queen's apartment, surrounded by the Princes of the Blood, to each of whom the royal infant was successively presented; and this ceremony was no sooner terminated than, bending over him with passionate fondness, he audibly invoked a blessing upon his head; and then placing his sword in the tiny hand as yet unable to grasp it, "May you use it, my son," he exclaimed, "to the glory of God, and in defence of your crown and people." [142] He next approached the bed of the Queen: "_M'amie_" he said tenderly, "rejoice! God has given us what we asked." [143] Mezeray and Matthieu both assert that the birth of the Dauphin was preceded by an earthquake, which, with the usual superstition of the period, was afterwards declared to have been a forewarning of the ceaseless wars by which Europe was convulsed during his reign.[144] Rejoicings were general throughout the whole country, and were augmented by the fact that more than eighty years had elapsed since the birth of a successor to the crown who had been eligible to bear the title of Dauphin,--Francis II having come into the world before his father Henri II was on the throne, who had himself only attained to that title after the death of his elder brother Francis, who was born in 1517.[145] "Te Deums" were chanted in all the churches; salvos of artillery were discharged at the Arsenal; fireworks, bonfires, and illuminations made a city of flame of Paris for several successive nights; while joyous acclamations rent the air, and the gratified citizens congratulated each other as they perambulated the streets as though each had experienced some personal benefit.

The fact that Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III of Spain, was born only five days previous to the Dauphin, was another source of delight to the French people, who regarded the circumstance as an earnest of the future union of the two kingdoms, a prophecy which was afterwards fulfilled by the marriage of the two royal children.
We have already made more than one allusion to the belief in magic, sorcery, and astrology which at this period had obtained in France, and by which many, even of the most enlightened of her nobles and citizens, suffered themselves to be trammelled and deluded; and however much we of the present day may be inclined to pity or to despise so great a weakness, we shall do well to remember that human progress during the last sixty years has been more marked and certain than that which had taken place in the lapse of the three previous centuries.

It is true that there were a few strong-minded individuals even at the period of which we treat who refused to submit their reason to the wild and illogical superstitions which were rife about them; but these formed a very small portion of the aggregate population, and from the peasant in his hovel to the monarch on his throne the plague-spot of credulity had spread and festered, until it presented a formidable feature in the history of the time.

It is curious to remark that L'Etoile, the most commonplace and unimaginative of chroniclers, who might well have been expected in his realism to treat such phantasies as puerile and absurd, seems to justify to his own mind the extreme penalties of the scaffold and the stake as a fitting punishment for sorcerers and magicians: declaring them, as he records in his usual terse and matter-of-fact style, to be dictated by justice, and essential to the repression of an intercourse between men and evil spirits.
Gabrielle d'Estrees was the dupe, if, indeed, not the victim, of her firm faith in astrology.

She had been assured that "a child would prevent her from attaining the rank to which she aspired;" [146] and the predisposition of an excited nervous system probably assisted the verification of the prophecy.