decide the issue, and that he had charged Count de Brissac to tell
Mayenne that he would give a finger of his right hand for a battle, and
two for a general peace. He knew and pitied the sufferings of Paris, but
the horrors now raging there were to please the King of Spain. That
monarch had told the Duke of Parma to trouble himself but little about
the Netherlands so long as he could preserve for him his city of Paris.
But it was to lean on a broken reed to expect support from this old,
decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of
France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to
the Indies. The crown was his own birthright. Were it elective he
should receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors. He hoped
soon to drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom. Should he
fail, they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest
who had called them in, and Paris would become the theatre of the
bloodiest tragedy ever yet enacted. The king then ordered Sir Roger
Williams to see that a collation was prepared for the deputies, and the
veteran Welshman took occasion to indulge in much blunt conversation with
the guests. He informed them that he, Mr. Sackville, and many other
strangers were serving the king from the hatred they bore the Spaniards
and Mother League, and that his royal mistress had always 8000 Englishmen
ready to maintain the cause.

While the conferences were going on, the officers and soldiers of the
besieging army thronged to the gate, and had much talk with the townsmen.
Among others, time-honoured La None with the iron arm stood near the gate
and harangued the Parisians. "We are here," said he, "five thousand
gentlemen; we desire your good, not your ruin. We will make you rich:
let us participate in your labour and industry. Undo not yourselves to
serve the ambition of a few men." The townspeople hearing the old
warrior discoursing thus earnestly, asked who he was. When informed that