province of the kingdom, were better facts than the Holy Inquisition to
preserve a great nation from sinking into the slough of political
extinction.

Henry was most anxious that Sully should convert himself to the ancient
Church, and the gossips of the day told each other that the duke had
named his price for his conversion. To be made high constable of France,
it was said would melt the resolve of the stiff Huguenot. To any other
inducement or blandishment he was adamant. Whatever truth may have been
in such chatter, it is certain that the duke never gratified his master's
darling desire.

Yet it was for no lack of attempts and intrigues on the part of the king,
although it is not probable that he would have ever consented to bestow
that august and coveted dignity upon a Bethune.

The king did his best by intrigue, by calumny, by talebearing, by
inventions, to set the Huguenots against each other, and to excite the
mutual jealousy of all his most trusted adherents, whether Protestant or
Catholic. The most good-humoured, the least vindictive, the most
ungrateful, the falsest of mankind, he made it his policy, as well as his
pastime, to repeat, with any amount of embroidery that his most florid
fancy could devise, every idle story or calumny that could possibly
create bitter feeling and make mischief among those who surrounded him.
Being aware that this propensity was thoroughly understood, he only
multiplied fictions, so cunningly mingled with truths, as to leave his
hearers quite unable to know what to believe and what to doubt. By
such arts, force being impossible, he hoped one day to sever the band
which held the conventicles together, and to reduce Protestantism to
insignificance. He would have cut off the head of D'Aubigne or Duplessis