"Now, now, speak freely; your silence offends me far more than your most adverse expressions could.

I misdoubt me much that you will not give me your approval, if it were only for the hundred thousand crowns that I made you hand over with so much regret; I promise you not to be vexed at anything you can possibly say to me." "You mean it, sir, and you promise not to be angry with me, whatever I may say or do ?" "Yes, yes; I promise all you desire, since for anything you say it will be all the same, neither more nor less." Thereupon, taking that written promise as if he would have given it back to the king, Sully, instead of that, tore it in two, saying, a "There, sir, as you wish to know, is what I think about such a promise." "Ha! morbleu, what are you at?
Are you mad ?" "It is true, sir; I am a madman and fool; and I wish I were so much thereof as to be the only one in France." "Very well, very well: I understand you," said the king, "and will say no more, in order to keep my word to you; but give me back that paper." "Sir," replied Sully, "I have no doubt your Majesty is aware that you are destroying all the preparatives for your dismarriage, for, this promise once divulged,--and it is demanded of you for no other purpose,--never will the queen, your wife, do the things necessary to make your dismarriage valid, nor indeed will the pope bestow upon it his Apostolic blessing; that I know of my own knowledge." The king made no answer, went out of the gallery, entered his closet, asked for pen and ink, remained there a quarter of an hour, wrote out a second paper like that which had just been torn up, mounted his horse without saying a word to Sully whom he met, went hunting, and, during the day, deposited the new promise of marriage with Henriette d'Entraigues, who kept it or had it kept in perfect secrecy till the 2d of July, the time at which her father, the Count of Entiaigues, gave her up to, the king in consideration of twenty thousand crowns cash.
In the teeth of all these incidents, known or voluntarily ignored, the negotiations for the annulment of the marriage of Henry IV.

and Marguerite de Valois were proceeded with at Rome by consent of the two parties.

Clement VIII.

had pronounced on the 17th of December, 1599, and transmitted to Paris by Cardinal de Joyeuse the decree of annulment.
On the 6th of January, 1600, Henry IV.