Thomas. I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides
those I told you about yesterday. At this moment of writing I have a
hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate
Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes. 'Tis to-morrow that I take the
perilous leap. I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel
and the mouth of my dear mistress."

A truce--renewed at intervals--with the Leaguers lasted till the end of
the year. The Duke of Nevers was sent on special mission to Rome to
procure the holy father's consent to the great heretic's reconciliation
to the Church, and he was instructed to make the king's submission in
terms so wholesale and so abject that even some of the life-long papists
of France were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank
into himself for shame. But Clement, overawed by Philip and his
ambassador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy.
He protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's
conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him. So
Nevers left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather
have lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed
into the Tiber, than bear back such a message. The pope ordered the
prelates who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by
the Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by
his side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening
to kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.

Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a
still more exhilarating popular spectacle. The heretic had been
purified, confessed, absolved. It was time for a consecration. But
there was a difficulty. Although the fever of loyalty to the ancient
house of Bourbon, now redeemed from its worship of the false gods, was