emselves to be rebuffed by any obstacle, for
the pope would, sooner or later, welcome back the lost child who returned
to him. At this report, and by the advice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
Ferdinand de' Medici, Henry IV. determined to send a solemn embassy to
Rome, and to put it under the charge of a prince of Italian origin, Peter
di Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers. But either through the pope's stubborn
resolve or the ambassador's somewhat impatient temper, devoted as he was,
however, to the Holy See, the embassy had no success. The Duke of Nevers
could not obtain an official reception as ambassador of the King of
France. It was in vain that he had five confidential audiences of the
pope; in vain that he represented energetically to him all the progress
Henry IV. had already made, all the chances he had of definitive success,
all the perils to which the papacy exposed itself by rejecting his
advances; Clement VIII. persisted in his determination. Philip II. and
Mayenne still reigned in his ideas, and he dismissed the Duke of Nevers
on the 13th of January, 1594, declaring once more that he refused to the
Navarrese absolution at the inner bar of conscience, absolution at the
outer bar, and confirmation in his kingship.

Henry IV. did not put himself out, did not give himself the pleasure of
testifying to Rome his discontent; he saw that he had not as yet
sufficiently succeeded--sufficiently vanquished his enemies, or won to
himself his kingdom with sufficient completeness and definitiveness--to
make the pope feel bound to recognize and sanction his triumph. He set
himself once more to work to grow still greater in France, and force the
gates of Rome without its being possible to reproach him with violence or
ill temper.

He had been absolved and crowned at St. Denis by the bishops of France;
he had not been anointed at Rheims, according to the religious traditions
of the French monarchy. At Rheims he could not be; for it was still in
the power of the League. Researches were made, to discover whether the
ceremony of anointment might take place elsewhere; numerous instances
were found, and in the case of famous kings: Pepin the Short had been
anointed first of all at Mayence, Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnair at
Rome, Charles the Bald at Mayence, several emperors at Aix-la-Chapelle
and at Cologne. The question of the holy phial (ampoule) was also
discussed; and it was proved that on several occasions other oils, hel