public places--not for the King, but for Guise. Paris, more madly in
love with her champion than ever, prostrated herself at his feet. For
him paeans as to a deliverer. Without him the ark would have fallen into
the hands of the Philistines. For the Valois, shouts of scorn from the
populace, thunders from the pulpit, anathemas from monk and priest,
elaborate invectives from all the pedants of the Sorbonne, distant
mutterings of excommunication from Rome--not the toothless beldame of
modern days, but the avenging divinity of priest-rid monarchs. Such were
the results of the edicts of June. Spain and the Pope had trampled upon
France, and the populace in her capital clapped their hands and jumped
for joy. "Miserable country miserable King," sighed an illustrious
patriot, "whom his own countrymen wish rather to survive, than to die to
defend him! Let the name of Huguenot and of Papist be never heard of
more. Let us think only of the counter-league. Is France to be saved by
opening all its gates to Spain? Is France to be turned out of France, to
make a lodging for the Lorrainer and the Spaniard?" Pregnant questions,
which could not yet be answered, for the end was not yet. France was to
become still more and more a wilderness. And well did that same brave
and thoughtful lover, of his: country declare, that he who should
suddenly awake from a sleep of twenty-five years, and revisit that once
beautiful land, would deem himself transplanted to a barbarous island of
cannibals.--[Duplessis Mornay, 'Mem.' iv. 1-34.]

It had now become quite obvious that the game of Leicester was played
out. His career--as it has now been fully exhibited--could have but one
termination. He had made himself thoroughly odious to the nation whom he
came to govern. He had lost for ever the authority once spontaneously
bestowed; and he had attempted in vain, both by fair means and foul, to
recover that power. There was nothing left him but retreat. Of this he
was thoroughly convinced. He was anxious to be gone, the republic most