entreaties by pleading that the Duke of Mayenne would think ill of their
assembling. "Then you are not the tradesmen's but M. de Mayenne's
provost?" said one of them. "I am no Spaniard," answered the provost;
"no more is M. de Mayenne; I am anxious to reconcile you to the Sixteen."
"We are honest folks, not branded and defamed like the Sixteen; we will
have no reconciliation with the wretches." The Parliament grew excited,
and exclaimed against the insolence and the menaces of the Sixteen. "We
must give place to these sedition-mongers, or put them down." A decree,
published by sound of trumpet on the 14th of March, 1594, throughout the
whole city, prohibited the Sixteen and their partisans from assembling on
pain of death. That same day, Count de Brissac, governor of Paris, had
an interview at the abbey of St. Anthony, with his brother-in-law,
Francis d'Epinay, Lord of St. Luc, Henry IV.'s grand-master of the
ordnance; they had disputes touching private interests, which they
wished, they said, to put right; and on this pretext advocates had
appeared at their interview. They spent three hours in personal
conference, their minds being directed solely to the means of putting the
king into possession of Paris. They separated in apparent dudgeon.
Brissac went to call upon the legate Gaetani, and begged him to excuse
the error he had committed in communicating with a heretic; his interest
in the private affairs in question was too great, he said, for him to
neglect it. The legate excused him graciously, whilst praising him for
his modest conduct, and related the incident to the Duke of Feria, the
Spanish ambassador. "He is a good fellow, M. de Brissac," said the
ambassador; "I have always found him so; you have only to employ the
Jesuits to make him do all you please. He takes little notice,
otherwise, of affairs; one day, when we were holding council in here,
whilst we were deliberating, he was amusing himself by catching flies."
For four days the population of Paris was occupied with a solemn
procession in honor of St. Genevieve, in which the Parliament and all the