Licensed to travel with horses for himself
and three servants, Philip Sidney left London in the train of the
Earl of Lincoln, who was going out as ambassador to Charles IX., in
Paris. He was in Paris on the 24th of August in that year, which
was the day of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was sheltered
from the dangers of that day in the house of the English Ambassador,
Sir Francis Walsingham, whose daughter Fanny Sidney married twelve
years afterwards.
From Paris Sidney travelled on by way of Heidelberg to Frankfort,
where he lodged at a printer's, and found a warm friend in Hubert
Languet, whose letters to him have been published. Sidney was
eighteen and Languet fifty-five, a French Huguenot, learned and
zealous for the Protestant cause, who had been Professor of Civil
Law in Padua, and who was acting as secret minister for the Elector
of Saxony when he first knew Sidney, and saw in him a future
statesman whose character and genius would give him weight in the
counsels of England, and make him a main hope of the Protestant
cause in Europe. Sidney travelled on with Hubert Languet from
Frankfort to Vienna, visited Hungary, then passed to Italy, making
for eight weeks Venice his head-quarters, and then giving six weeks
to Padua. He returned through Germany to England, and was in
attendance it the Court of Queen Elizabeth in July, 1575.
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