children as students to any
Jesuits out of the kingdom, on pain of being declared enemies of the
state." This decree was issued on the 29th of December, 1594. And as if
to leave no doubt about the sense and bearing of this legislation, it was
immediately applied in the case of a Jesuit father, John Guignard, a
native of Chartres; his papers were examined, and there were found in his
handwriting many propositions and provocatives of sedition, such as,
"That a great mistake had been made at the St. Bartholomew in not having
opened the basilic vein, that is, in not having murdered Henry IV. and
the Prince of Conde, who were of the blood royal; 2. That the crown
might have been, and ought to have been, transferred to a family other
than that of the Bourbons; 3. That the Bearnese, in spite of his
pretended conversion, ought to consider himself only too lucky if it were
considered sufficient to shave his head and shut him up in a convent to
do penance there; that if the crown could not betaken from him without
war, then war must be made on him; and that if the state of things did
not admit of making war on him, he ought to be got rid of at any price
and in any way whatsoever." For having, not published, but thought and
with his own hand written out all this, and probably taught it to his
pupils, Father Guignard was obliged to retract, and was afterwards hanged
in the Place de Greve on the 7th of January, 1595.

The task of honest men and of right minds is greater and more difficult
in our day than it was in the sixteenth century, for we have to reconcile
the laws and the requirements of moral and social order with far broader
principles and sentiments, as regards right and liberty, than were those
of President Augustin de Thou and the worthy functionaries of his time.

It was one of Henry IV.'s conspicuous qualities that no event, auspicious
or inauspicious, affected the correctness of his judgment, and that he
was just as much a stranger to illusion or intoxication in the hour of
good fortune as to discouragement in the hour of ill. He had sense
enough to see, in any case, things as they really were, and to estimate
at the proper value the strength they brought or the obstacles they
formed to his government. He saw at a glance all the importance there
was for him in the submission of Paris, and what change in his conduct
was required by that in his position. Certain local successes of the
Spaniards at some points in