When she at last
married, the match was not a brilliant one, though it proved, contrary
to immediate probability, to be the source of the last and the most
glorious branch of the royal dynasty of France. The bridegroom bore
indeed the title of King of Navarre and possessed Beam, but his kingdom
had long been in Spanish hands, and but for his wife's dowry of Alencon
and appanage of Berry (to which Francis had added Armagnac and a large
pension) he would have been but a lackland. Furthermore, he was eleven
years younger than herself, and it is at least insinuated that the
affection, if there was any, was chiefly on her side. At any rate,
this earlier Henry of Navarre seems to have had not a few of the
characteristics of his grandson, together with a violence and brutality
which, to do the _Vert Galant_ justice, formed no part of his character.
The only son of the marriage died young, and a girl, Jane d'Albret,
mother of the great Bourbon race of the next two centuries, was taken
away from her parents by "reasons of state" for a time.
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