understandings, associations, and other matters into which our Catholic
subjects might have entered together; inasmuch as they have given us to
understand and have informed us that what they did was but owing to the
zeal they felt for the preservation and maintenance of the Catholic
religion." By thus releasing the League from all responsibility for the
past, and by giving this new treaty the name of edict of union, Henry
III. flattered himself, it is said, that he was thus putting himself at
the head of a new grand Catholic League which would become royalist
again, inasmuch as the king was granting it all it had desired. The
edict of union was enregistered at the Parliament of Paris on the 21st of
July. The states-general were convoked for the 15th of October
following. "On Tuesday, August 2, his Majesty," says L'Estoile, "being
entertained by the Duke of Guise during his dinner, asked him for drink,
and then said to him, 'To whom shall we drink?' 'To whom you please,
sir,' answered the duke; 'it is for your Majesty to command.' 'Cousin,'
said the king, 'drink we to our good friends the Huguenots.' 'It is well
said, sir,' answered the duke. 'And to our good barricaders,' said the
king; 'let us not forget them.' Whereupon the duke began to laugh a
little," adds L'Estoile, "but a sort of laugh that did not go beyond the
knot of the throat, being dissatisfied at the novel union the king was
pleased to make of the Huguenots with the barricaders." What must have
to some extent reassured the Duke of Guise was, that a Te Deum was
celebrated at Notre-Dame for the King of Navarre's exclusion from all
right to the crown, and that, on the 14th of August Henry de Guise was
appointed generalissimo of the royal armies.

[Illustration: The Castle of Blois----428]

The states-general met at Blois on the 16th of October, 1588. They
numbered five hundred and five deputies; one hundred and ninety-one of
the third estate, one hundred and eighty of the noblesse, one hundred and
thirty-four of the clergy. The king had given orders "to conduct each
deputy as they arrived to his cabinet, that he might see, hear, and know
them all personally." When the five hundred and five deputies had taken
their places in the hall, the Duke of Guise went to fetch the king, who
made his entry attended by the princes of the blood, and opened the
session with the dignity and easy grace which all the Valois seemed to
have inherited from Francis I.