Gaspard de Coligny Admiral of France Author:Walter Besant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. FIRST ESSAY OF ARMS. sons' of the Marshal de Chatillon and Louise A de Montmorency, once the friend of good Queen Claude, and the gouvernante of... more » Marguerite, could not be otherwise than well received by Francis. The former splendour of the Court was now greatly dimmed. The increasing age of the King, disappointment, defeat, religious hesitation, excess, and indulgence, had changed for the worse that once chivalrous spirit. The tone of the Court was lower than when Francis and Montmorency and all of them were young, and hopes ran high. Of any personal distinction shown to the two boys by the King, we hear nothing; but they were honourably received, in spite of the disgrace of the Constable. Then, for a brief space, Gaspard enjoyed the sunshine of youth, friendship, and the pleasures of what was still outwardly the most refined and splendid Court in Europe. Tournaments, dances, hunting, tennis, the bravery of dress, manly exercises,Sunshine and Spring. 37 and feats of arms, occupied his time. For companions, he had the Dauphin and the younger men who naturally gathered round the heir. It is hard to realise that Coligny, the man in whom personal gravity is the one characteristic most strongly insisted upon by his biographers, was ever a young man, frolicsome and light-hearted—that there was once a time when he cared nothing for religious controversy, and played, with his fellows, his part in freak and folly. Yet .nothing is more natural—nothing more certain to have happened to a lad of sound and healthy disposition, thus thrown into such a society at such an age. For him whose life was to be a long series of disappointments, this time of gaiety seems like a single hour of sunshine in a day of untimely sleet and wind. One need not inquire too closely into the you...« less