e believed to have been suggested to him by
others. For the king entreated his mother, almost as a suppliant, 'to take
the greatest care lest war should again break out, and that the edict
should everywhere be observed: otherwise he foresaw the complete ruin of
his kingdom.'[569] And when the queen alleged the rebellion of the
inhabitants of La Rochelle, he replied, as he had been instructed
beforehand, 'that the Rochellois only desired to retain their ancient
privileges. Their demand was not unreasonable; and even if it were, it was
better to make a temporary sacrifice to the welfare of the realm than to
plunge in new turmoil. As to the nobles, he was persuaded that they would
live peaceably if the edict were properly executed. In short, he was
earnestly desirous that matters should be restored to their best and most
quiet state.' The queen and very many other illustrious persons have but
one object of fervent desire, and that is to see the kingdom of France
return to the condition it was in under Francis and Henry. The queen
mother knows that this speech was dictated to him by certain men, and she
owes the authors of it no good-will. So much the more anxiously does she
desire, in common with a vast multitude of good Catholics, to prove to
the king that whatever is done in this affair has for its sole object to
liberate him from servitude and make him a king in reality, and to expel
the pestilence and those infected by it--a result utterly unattainable in
any other way."[570]

[Sidenote: Catharine's animosity against L'Hospital.]

Catharine could not doubt that it was Michel de l'Hospital that had
infused into Charles his own just and pacific spirit. From the moment she
had come to this conclusion the chancellor's fall was inevitable. The
particular occasion of it, however, seems to have been the opposition
which he offered to the reception of a papal bull. To relieve the royal
treasury, the court had applied to Rome for permission to alienate
ecclesiastical possessions in France yielding an income of fifty thousand
crowns (or one hundred and fifty thousand francs), on the plea that the
indebtedness had been incurred in defence of the Roman Catholic faith.
Pius the Fifth granted the application, but in his bull of the first of
August, 1568, he not only made it a condition that the funds should be
exclusively employed under the direction of a trustworthy person--and as
such he named the Cardinal of Lorraine--in the exte