As he was passing through a room where hung a portrait of Henry de Guise, he halted and saluted it very courteously.

The Duchess of Montpensier, who had so often execrated him, did not hesitate to express her regret that "her brother Mayenne had not been there to let down for him the drawbridge of the gate by which he had entered Paris." "Ventre-saint-gris," said the king, "he might have made me wait a long while; I should not have arrived so early." He knew that the Duchess of Nemours had desired peace, and when she allowed some signs of vexation to peep out at her not having been able to bring her sons and grandsons to that determination, "Madame," said he, a there is still time if they please." At the close of 1594, he imported disorganization into the household of Lorraine by offering the government of Provence to the young Duke Charles of Guise, son of the Balafre; who eagerly accepted it; and he from that moment paved the way, by the agency of President Jeannin, for his reconciliation with Mayenne, which he brought to accomplishment at the end of 1595.
The close of this happy and glorious year was at hand.

On the 27th of September, between six and seven P.M., a deplorable incident occurred, for the second time, to call Henry IV.'s attention to the weak side of his position.

He was just back from Picardy, and holding a court-reception at Schomberg House, at the back of the Louvre.

John Chastel, a young man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city, slipped in among the visitors, managed to approach the king, and dealt him a blow with a knife just as he was stooping to raise and embrace Francis de la Grange, Sieur de Montigny, who was kneeling before him.
The blow, aimed at the king's throat, merely slit his upper lip and broke a tooth.