cf. also De Thou, ii. 781.) But the edict was published
_before_ the appointment of L'Hospital, and while Morvilliers, a
creature of the Guises, provisionally held the seals after Chancellor
Olivier's death; and the spiritual jurisdiction it established differed
little in principle from an inquisition. In fact, three of the French
prelates, the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Chatillon, had, as we
have seen, been constituted a board of inquisitors of the faith; and,
soon after the publication of the Edict of Romorantin, the Cardinal of
Tournon was set over them as inquisitor-general. The subject has been
well discussed by Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i.
338-342. The Duc d'Aumale, in his usually accurate Histoire des Princes
de Conde (i. 113), repeats the blunder of La Planche and De Thou.]

[Footnote 872: Recueil des anc. lois fr., xiv. 31-33; La Planche, 305,
306; La Place, 46, 47. It is, of course, "an edict holily conceived and
promulgated," in the estimation of Florimond de Raemond, v. 113. The only
redeeming feature I can find in it is the article by which malicious
informers made themselves liable to all the penalties they had sought to
inflict on others.]

[Footnote 873: La Place, 36 (who states that the burning of Du Bourg was
an occasion of deep remorse in Olivier's last hours); La Planche, 266;
J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip., i., fol. 35; De Thou, ii. (liv.
xxiv.), 775; Hist. du tumulte d'Amboise, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 874: La Planche, 305.]

[Footnote 875: If we may credit that professed panegyrist, Scaevola de
St. Marthe, L'Hospital was of an august appearance, of a dignified and
tranquil countenance, and, if his intellectual constitution had a
philosophic stamp, his features bore a not less remarkable resemblance
to the head of the Stagirite as delineated on ancient medals. Elogia
doctorum in Gallia virorum qui nostra patrumque memoria floruerunt
(Ienae, 1696), lib. ii., p. 95.]

[Footnote 876: This remarkable statement is made by Agrippa d'Aubigne,
Memoires, 478 (Ed. Pantheon Lit.). He tells us that he had inherited
from his father, himself one of the conspirators, the original papers of
the enterprise of Amboise. The suggestion was made by a confidant, that
the possession of the proof of L'Hospital's complicity would certainly
secure him 10,000 crowns, either from the chancellor or from his
enemies; whereupon the youth threw all the papers into the fire lest he
might in a