Seeing him at
last, all were conscious in a moment of the inversion of their hopes.
Had the old witchcrafts of Poland, the old devilries of his race,
laid visible hold on the hopeful young man, that he must now take
purely satiric estimate of so great an opportunity, with a programme
which looked like formal irony on the kingly position, a premeditated
mockery of those who yielded him, on demand, a servile reverence
never before paid to any French monarch? Well! the amusement, or
business, of Parisians, at all events, would still be that of
spectators, assisting at the last act of the Valois tragedy, in the
course of which fantastic traits and incidents would naturally be
multiplied. Fantastic humour seemed at its height in the institution
of a new order of knighthood, the enigmatic splendours of which were
to be a monument of Henry's superstitious care, or, as some said, of
his impious contempt, of the day which had made him master of his
destiny,--that great Church festival, towards the emphatic marking of
which he was ever afterwards ready to welcome any novel or striking
device for the spending of an hour.
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