f nothing_. Diligence and resolution are now
absolutely necessary for you."

She then turned upon her pillow without the slightest apparent
emotion. In twelve days from this time, this wretched queen, deformed
by every vice, without one single redeeming virtue, breathed her last,
seventy years of age. She was despised by the Catholics, and hated by
the Protestants.

These acts of violence and crime roused the League to the most intense
energy. The murder of the Duke of Guise, and especially the murder of
his brother, a cardinal in the Church, were acts of impiety which no
atonement could expiate. Though Henry was a Catholic, and all his
agents in these atrocious murders were Catholics, the death of the
Duke of Guise increased vastly the probability that Protestant
influences might become dominant at court. The Pope issued a bull of
excommunication against all who should advocate the cause of Henry
III. The Sorbonne published a decree declaring that the king had
forfeited all right to the obedience of his subjects, and justifying
them in taking up arms against him. The clergy, from the pulpit,
refused communion, absolution, and burial in holy ground to every one
who yielded obedience to "the perfidious apostate and tyrant; Henry of
Valois."

The League immediately chose the Duke of Mayenne, a surviving brother
of the Duke of Guise, as its head. The Pope issued his anathemas
against Henry III., and Spain sent her armies to unite with the
League. Henry now found it necessary to court the assistance of the
Protestants. He dreaded to take this step, for he was superstitious in
the extreme, and he could not endure the thought of any alliance with
heretics. He had still quite a formidable force which adhered to him,
for many of the highest nobles were disgusted with the arrogance of
the Guises, and were well aware that the enthronement of the house of
Guise would secure their own banishment from court.

The triumph of the League would be total discomfiture to the
Protestants. No freedom of worship or of conscience whatever would be
allowed them. It was therefore for the interest of the Protestants to
sustain the more moderate party hostile to the League. It was
estimated that about one sixth of the inhabitants of France were at
that time Protestants.

Wretched, war-scathed France was now distracted by three parties.
First, there were the Protestants, contending only in self-defense
against persecution, and yet earnestly