gn affairs, once showed me an inscription, in
monumental Latin, setting forth how he had at last paid off the
immense debt incurred by the legate in the defence of Paris. With
Caetani was Bellarmin, the most famous controversialist of the
sixteenth century, who there imbibed the doctrines which made him one
of the masters of revolutionary Catholicism, and a forerunner of
Algernon Sidney. There, too, Mariana had witnessed the scenes of
1572, and learnt the mingled lesson of conditional authority, revolt,
and murder, which he taught publicly, and without incurring censure at
Madrid or Rome. For thirty years these views prevailed over a wider
circle, and were enforced in many volumes too ponderous to survive.

In France the revival of these sanguinary sentiments served to
increase reaction and to strengthen the party of the throne. In
preference to such defenders of religion and the public good, people
turned to the austere Royalists and Gallicans. The change was not
final or complete, and did not carry all men with it. Imitators of
Jacques Clement arose among the clergy, and Henry fell at last by the
hand of a fanatic. When Mayenne sent the leaders of the populace to
the scaffold, the defence became hopeless. Henry foiled his enemies
by becoming a Catholic. He was not capable of taking dogmatic issues
much to heart, and never ceased to hope for reunion, believing that
the breach could be repaired, and that men who took pains to
understand each other would find that there was no insurmountable
obstacle to reconciliation. Many profited by the change who doubted
his sincerity. But Henry was in the hands of Duperron, one of the
most expert divines of modern times, who proved more than a match for
Duplessis Mornay, and whom Casaubon, a better scholar than Duplessis
Mornay, described as a thunderbolt of a man. Nobody supposed that he
would have conformed if it had involved the sacrifice of the crown.
It is not clear that it did actually involve the sacrifice of his
conviction. The Pope, under Spanish influence, hesitated long to
acknowledge him. It was a defeat and a humiliation to accept as
eldest son of the Church an excommunicated heretic, who, by the law of
the Supreme Tribunal, deserved to die, and to submit to him because he
was victorious over Catholics of France and Spain. His elevation was
a boon to the French, because he restored the prosperity of their
Church; but it was none to Rome, because his belie