lemen, adieu! Commend me to your master, and go in peace,
but do not come back again."

La Noue, one of Henry's chief supporters, as he was entering the city,
had his baggage attached for an old debt. Indignantly he hastened to
the king to complain of the outrage. The just monarch promptly but
pleasantly replied,

"We must pay our debts, La Noue. I pay mine." Then drawing his
faithful servant aside, he gave him his jewels to pledge for the
deliverance of his baggage. The king was so impoverished that he had
not money sufficient to pay the debt.

These principles of justice and magnanimity, which were instinctive
with the king, and which were daily manifested in multiplied ways,
soon won to him nearly all hearts. All France had writhed in anguish
through years of war and misery. Peace, the greatest of all earthly
blessings, was now beginning to diffuse its joys. The happiness of the
Parisians amounted almost to transport. It was difficult for the king
to pass through the streets, the crowd so thronged him with their
acclamations. Many other important towns soon surrendered. But the
haughty Duke of Mayenne refused to accept the proffered clemency, and,
strengthened by the tremendous spiritual power of the head of the
Church, still endeavored to arouse the energies of Papal fanaticism in
Flanders and in Spain.

Soon, however, the Pope became convinced that all further resistance
would be in vain. It was but compromising his dignity to be
vanquished, and he accordingly decided to accept reconciliation. In
yielding to this, the Pope stooped to the following silly farce, quite
characteristic of those days of darkness and delusion. It was deemed
necessary that the king should do penance for his sins before he could
be received to the bosom of holy mother Church. It was proper that the
severe mother should chastise her wayward child. "Whom the Lord loveth
he chasteneth."

It was the sixteenth of September, 1595. The two embassadors of Henry
IV. kneeled upon the vestibule of one of the churches in Rome as
unworthy to enter. In strains of affected penitence, they chanted the
_Miserere_--"Have mercy, Lord." At the close of every verse they
received, in the name of their master, the blows of a little switch on
their shoulders. The king, having thus made expiation for his sins,
through the reception of this chastisement by proxy, and having thus
emphatically acknowledged the authority of the sacred mother, received
the absolu