Was there any one belonging to that august and illustrious household who had, at that time, a presentiment of their impending and tragic destiny?
At the same period, the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, obtained for her young nephew, Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, son of the hero of Jarnac, and companion of Henry of Navarre, the hand of his cousin, Mary of Cleves; and there was still going on in London, on behalf of one of Charles IX.'s brothers,--at one time the Duke of Anjou and at another the Duke of Alencon,--the negotiation which was a vain attempt to make Queen Elizabeth espouse a French prince.
Coincidently with all these marriages or projects of marriage amongst princes and great lords came the most important of all, that which was to unite Henry of Navarre and Charles IX.'s sister, Marguerite de Valois.
There had already, thirteen or fourteen years previously, been some talk about it, in the reign of King Henry II., when Henry of Navarre and Margaret de Valois, each born in 1553, were both of them mere babies.
This union between the two branches of the royal house, one Catholic and the other Protestant, ought to have been the most striking sign and the surest pledge of peace between Catholicism and Protestantism.

The political expediency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent in proportion as the religious war had become more direful and the desire for peace more general.

Charles IX.

embraced the idea passionately.

At the outset he encountered an obstacle.