assemblies were orators, and he who delivered himself with the most fluency and the most pertinent arguments would infallibly bend every heart to the point he wished. The French bishop depended greatly on the effect which his oration was to produce when the ambassadors were respectively to be heard before the assembled diet; the great and concluding act of so many tedious and difficult negotiations-" which had cost my master," writes the ingenuous secretary, "six months' daily and nightly labours; he had never been assisted or comforted by any but his poor servants, and in the course of these six months had written ten reams of paper, a thing which for forty years he had not used himself to."

Every ambassador was now to deliver an oration before the assembled electors, and thirty-two copies were to be printed, to present one to each palatine, who in his turn was to communicate it to his lords. But a fresh difficulty occurred to the French negotiator; as he trusted greatly to his address influencing the multitude, and creating a popular opinion in his favour, he regretted to find that the imperial ambassador would deliver his speech in the Bohemian language, so that he would be understood by the greater part of the assembly; a considerable advantage over Montluc, who could only address them in Latin. The inventive genius of the French bishop resolved on two things which had never before been practised: first, to have his Latin translated into the vernacular idiom; and, secondly, to print an edition of fifteen hundred copies in both languages, and thus to obtain a vast advantage over the other ambassadors, with their thirty-two manuscript copies, of which each copy was used to be read to 1200 persons. The great difficulty was to get it secretly translated and printed. This fell to the management of Choisnin, the secretary. He set off to the castle of the palatine, Solikotski, who was deep in the French interest; Solikotski despatched the version in six days. Hastening with the precious MS. to Cracow, Choisnin flew to a trusty printer, with whom he was connected; the sheets were deposited every night at Choisnin's lodgings, and at the end of a fortnight the diligent secretary conducted the 1500 copies in secret triumph to Warsaw.

Yet this glorious labour was not ended; Montluc was in no haste to deliver his wonder-working oration, on which the fate of a crown seemed to depend. When his turn came to be heard, he suddenly fell sick; the fact was, that he wished

to speak last, which would give him the advantage of replying to any objection raised by his rivals, and admit also of an attack on their weak points.

He contrived to obtain copies of their harangues, and discovered five points which struck at the French interest. Our poor bishop had now to sit up through the night to re-write five leaves of his printed oration, and cancel five which had been printed; and worse! he had to get them by heart, and to have them translated and inserted, by employing twenty scribes day and night. "It is scarcely credible what iny master went through about this time," saith the historian of his "gestes."

The council or diet was held in a vast plain. Twelve pavilions were raised to receive the Polish nobility and the ambassadors. One of a circular form was supported by a single mast, and was large enough to contain 6000 persons, without any one approaching the mast nearer than by twenty steps, leaving this space void to preserve silence; the different orders were placed around; the archbishop and the bishops, the palatines, the castellans, each according to their rank. During the six weeks of the sittings of the diet, 100,000 horses were in the environs, yet forage and every sort of provisions. abounded. There were no disturbances, not a single quarrel occurred, although there wanted not in that meeting for enmities of long standing. It was strange, and even awful, to view such a mighty assembly preserving the greatest order, and every one seriously intent on this solemn occasion.

At length the elaborate oration was delivered: it lasted three hours, and Choisnin assures us not a single auditor felt weary. A cry of joy broke out from the tent, and was reechoed through the plain, when Montluc ceased: it was a public acclamation; and had the election been fixed for that moment, when all hearts were warm, surely the duke had been chosen without a dissenting voice." Thus writes, in rapture, the ingenuous secretary; and in the spirit of the times communicates a delightful augury attending this speech, by which evidently was foreseen its happy termination. "Those who disdain all things will take this to be a mere invention of mine," says honest Choisnin: "but true it is, that while the said sieur delivered his harangue, a lark was seen all the while upon the mast of the pavilion, singing and warbling, which was remarked by a great number of lords, because the lark is accustomed only to rest itself on the earth: the most

impartial confessed this to be a good augury * Also it was observed, that when the other ambassadors were speaking, a hare, and at another time a hog, ran through the tent; and when the Swedish ambassador spoke, the great tent fell halfway down. This lark singing all the while did no little good to our cause; for many of the nobles and gentry noticed this curious particularity, because when a thing which does not commonly happen occurs in a public affair, such appearances give rise to hopes either of good or of evil."

The singing of this lark in favour of the Duke of Anjou is not so evident as the cunning trick of the other French agent, the political Bishop of Valence, who now reaped the full advantage of his 1500 copies over the thirty-two of his rivals. Every one had the French one in hand, or read it to his friends; while the others, in manuscript, were confined to a very narrow circle.

The period from the 10th of April to the 6th of May, when they proceeded to the election, proved to be an interval of infinite perplexities, troubles, and activity; it is probable that the secret history of this period of the negotiations was never written. The other ambassadors were for protracting the election, perceiving the French interest prevalent: but delay would not serve the purpose of Montluc, he not being so well provided with friends and means on the spot as the others were. The public opinion which he had succeeded in creating, by some unforeseen circumstance might change.

A

During this interval, the bishop had to put several agents of the other parties hors de combat. He got rid of a formidable adversary in the Cardinal Commendon, an agent of the pope's, whom he proved ought not to be present at the eleetion, and the cardinal was ordered to take his departure. bullying colonel was set upon the French negotiator, and went about from tent to tent with a list of the debts of the Duke of Anjou, to show that the nation could expect nothing profitable from a ruined spendthrift. The page of a Polish count flew to Montluc for protection, entreating permission to accompany the bishop on his return to Paris. The servants of the count pursued the page; but this young gentleman had so insinuated himself into the favour of the bishop, that

*

Our honest secretary reminds me of a passage in Geoffrey of Monmouth, who says, "At this place an eagle spoke while the wall of the town was building; and indeed I should not have failed transmitting the speech to posterity had I thought it true as the rest of the history."

he was suffered to remain. The next day the page desired Montluc would grant him the full liberty of his religion, being an evangelical, that he might communicate this to his friends, and thus fix them to the French party. Montluc was too penetrating for this young political agent, whom he discovered to be a spy, and the pursuit of his fellows to have been a farce; he sent the page back to his master, the evangelical count, observing that such tricks were too gross to be played on one who had managed affairs in all the courts of Europe before he came into Poland.

Another alarm was raised by a letter from the grand vizier of Selim the Second, addressed to the diet, in which he requested that they would either choose a king from among themselves, or elect the brother of the King of France. Some zealous Frenchman at the Sublime Porte had officiously procured this recommendation from the enemy of Christianity; but an alliance with Mahometanism did no service to Montluc, either with the catholics or the evangelicals. The bishop was in despair, and thought that his handiwork of six months' toil and trouble was to be shook into pieces in an hour. Montluc, being shown the letter, instantly insisted that it was a forgery, designed to injure his master the duke. The letter was attended by some suspicious circumstances; and the French bishop, quick at expedients, snatched at an advantage which the politician knows how to lay hold of in the chapter of accidents. The letter was not sealed with the golden seal, nor enclosed in a silken purse or cloth of gold; and farther, if they examined the translation," he said, they would find that it was not written on Turkish paper.' This was a piece of the sieur's good fortune, for the letter was not forged; but owing to the circumstance that the Boyar of Wallachia had taken out the letter to send a translation with it, which the vizier had omitted, it arrived without its usual accompaniments; and the courier, when inquired after, was kept out of the way: so that, in a few days, nothing more was heard of the great vizier's letter. Such was our fortunate escape," says the secretary, "from the friendly but fatal interference of the sultan, than which the sieur dreaded nothing so much.'

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Many secret agents of the different powers were spinning their dark intrigues; and often, when discovered or disconcerted, the creatures were again at their " dirty work." These agents were conveniently disavowed or acknowledged

by their employers. The Abbé Cyre was an active agent of the emperor's, and though not publicly accredited, was still hovering about. In Lithuania he had contrived matters so well as to have gained over that important province for the archduke; and was passing through Prussia to hasten to communicate with the emperor, but some honest men," quelques bons personnages, says the French secretary, and no doubt some good friends of his master, "took him by surprise, and laid him up safely in the castle of Marienburgh, where truly he was a little uncivilly used by the soldiers, who rifled his portmanteau and sent us his papers, when we discovered all his foul practices." The emperor, it seems, was angry at the arrest of his secret agent; but as no one had the power of releasing the Abbé Cyre at that moment, what with receiving remonstrances and furnishing replies, the time passed away, and a very troublesome adversary was in safe custody during the election. The dissensions between the catholics and the evangelicals were always on the point of breaking out; but Montluc succeeded in quieting these inveterate parties by terrifying their imaginations with sanguinary civil wars, and invasions of the Turks and the Tartars. He satisfied the catholics with the hope that time would put an end to heresy, and the evangelicals were glad to obtain a truce from persecution. The day before the election Montluc found himself so confident, that he despatched a courier to the French court, and expressed himself in the true style of a speculative politician, that des douze tables du Damier nous en avons les Neufs assurés.

There were preludes to the election; and the first was probably in acquiescence with a saturnalian humour prevalent in some countries, where the lower orders are only allowed to indulge their taste for the mockery of the great at stated times and on fixed occasions. A droll scene of a mock election, as well as combat, took place between the numerous Polish pages, who, saith the grave secretary, are still more mischievous than our own: these elected among themselves four competitors, made a senate to burlesque the diet, and went to loggerheads. Those who represented the archduke were well beaten, the Swede was hunted down, and for the Piastis, they seized on a cart belonging to a gentleman, laden with provisions, broke it to pieces, and burnt the axle-tree, which in that country is called a piasti, and cried out The Piasti is burnt! nor could the senators at the diet that day