at the palace, he found the door of the pope's apartments closed, the
sentries doubled, and the officers on duty under orders to intimate to
the French, the chief of the embassy excepted, that they must lay aside
their swords. At the door of the Holy Father's closet, the duke and
three gentlemen of his train were alone allowed to enter. The
indignation felt by the French was mingled with apprehensions of an
ambush. Luxembourg himself could not banish a feeling of vague terror;
great was his astonishment when, on his introduction to the pontiff, the
latter received him with demonstrations of affection, asked him news of
his journey, said he would have liked to give him quarters in the palace,
made him sit down,--a distinction reserved for the ambassadors of kings,
--and, lastly, listened patiently to the French envoy's long recital. In
fact, the receptions _intra et, extra muros_ bore very little resemblance
one to the other, but the difference between them corresponded pretty
faithfully with the position of Sixtus V., half engaged to the League by
Gaetani's commission and to Philip II. by the steps he had recently
taken, and already regretting that he was so far gone in the direction of
Spain." [_Sixtus V,_ by Baron Hiibner, late ambassador of Austria at
Paris and at Rome, t. ii. pp. 280-282.]

Unhappily Sixtus V. died on the 27th of August, 1590, before having
modified, to any real purpose, his bearing towards the King of France and
his instructions to his legate. After Pope Urban VIII.'s apparition of
thirteen days' duration, Gregory XIV. was elected pope on the 5th of
December, 1590; and, instead of a head of the church able enough and
courageous enough to comprehend and practise a policy European and
Italian as well as Catholic in its scope, there was a pope humbly devoted
to the Spanish policy, meekly subservient to Philip II.; that is, to the
cause of religious persecution and of absolute power, without regard for
anything else. The relations of France with the Holy See at once felt