his oath in writing in the hands of
the archbishop, and kissed the consecrated ring upon his holy finger.
Then entering the Cathedral, he received the absolution of his sins
and the benediction of the Church. A _Te Deum_ was then sung, high
mass was solemnized, and thus the imposing ceremony was terminated.

It is easy to treat this whole affair as a farce. The elements of
ridicule are abundant. But it was by no means a farce in the vast
influences which it evolved. Catholic historians have almost
invariably assumed that the king acted in perfect good faith, being
fully convinced by the arguments of the Church. Even Henry's
Protestant friend, the Duke of Sully, remarks,

"I should betray the cause of truth if I suffered it even to
be suspected that policy, the threats of the Catholics, the
fatigue of labor, the desire of rest, and of freeing himself
from the tyranny of foreigners, or even the good of the
people, had entirely influenced the king's resolution. As far
as I am able to judge of the heart of this prince, which I
believe I know better than any other person, it was, indeed,
these considerations which first hinted to him the necessity
of his conversion; but, in the end, he became convinced in
his own mind that the Catholic religion was the safest."

Others have affirmed that it was a shameful act of apostasy, in which
the king, stimulated by ambition and unlawful love, stooped to
hypocrisy, and feigned a conversion which in heart he despised. He is
represented as saying, with levity,

"Paris is well worth a mass."

Others still assert that Henry was humanely anxious to arrest the
horrors of civil war; to introduce peace to distracted France, and to
secure the Protestants from oppression. His acceptance of the Catholic
faith was the only apparent way of accomplishing these results. Being
a humane man, but not a man of established Christian principle, he
deemed it his duty to pursue the course which would accomplish such
results. The facts, so far as known, are before the reader, and each
one can form his own judgment.

The announcement throughout the kingdom that Henry had become a
Catholic almost immediately put an end to the civil war. Incited by
the royal example, many of the leading Protestants, nobles and
gentlemen, also renounced Protestantism, and conformed to the religion
of the state. The chiefs of the League, many of whom were ambitious
political partisans