mnly convinced that the Roman Catholic faith was the true
religion. Those who knew Henry the best declare that he was sincere in
the change, and his subsequent life seems certainly to indicate that
he was so. The Duke of Sully, who refused to follow Henry into the
Catholic Church, records,

"As uprightness and sincerity formed the depth of his heart,
as they did of his words, I am persuaded that nothing would
have been capable of making him embrace a religion which he
internally despised, or of which he even doubted."

In view of this long interview with the Archbishop of Bourges, Henry
wrote to the frail but beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees,

"I began this morning to speak to the bishops. On Sunday I shall take
the perilous leap." The king's connection with Gabrielle presented
another strong motive to influence his conversion. Henry, when a mere
boy, had been constrained by political considerations to marry the
worthless and hateful sister of Charles IX. For the wife thus coldly
received he never felt an emotion of affection. She was an unblushing
profligate. The king, in one of his campaigns, met the beautiful
maiden Gabrielle in the chateau of her father. They both immediately
loved each other, and a relation prohibited by the divine law soon
existed between them. Never, perhaps, was there a better excuse for
unlawful love. But guilt ever brings woe. Neither party were happy.
Gabrielle felt condemned and degraded, and urged the king to obtain a
divorce from the notoriously profligate Marguerite of Valois, that
their union might be sanctioned by the rites of religion. Henry loved
Gabrielle tenderly. Her society was his chiefest joy, and it is said
that he ever remained faithful to her. He was anxious for a divorce
from Marguerite, and for marriage with Gabrielle. But this divorce
could only be obtained through the Pope. Hence Gabrielle exerted all
her influence to lead the king into the Church, that this most desired
end might be attained.

The king now openly proclaimed his readiness to renounce Protestantism
and to accept the Papal Creed. The Catholic bishops prepared an act of
abjuration, rejecting, very decisively, one after another, every
distinguishing article of the Protestant faith. The king glanced his
eye over it, and instinctively recoiled from an act which he seemed to
deem humiliating. He would only consent to sign a very brief
declaration, in six lines, of his return to the Church of Rom