all egress, the city was emptied of its populace,
which pressed in transports of adoration around the man so lately the
object of their hate. Yet few could seriously believe that much change
had been effected in the inner soul of him, whom the legate, and the
Spaniard, and the holy father at Rome still continued to denounce as the
vilest of heretics and the most infamous of impostors.

The comedy was admirably played out and was entirely successful. It may
be supposed that the chief actor was, however, somewhat wearied. In
private, he mocked at all this ecclesiastical mummery, and described
himself as heartily sick of the business. "I arrived here last evening,"
he wrote to the beautiful Gabrielle, "and was importuned with 'God save
you' till bed-time. In regard to the Leaguers I am of the order of St.
Thomas. I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides
those I told you about yesterday. At this moment of writing I have a
hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate
Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes. 'Tis to-morrow that I take the
perilous leap. I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel and
the mouth of my dear mistress."

A truce--renewed at intervals--with the Leaguers lasted till the end of
the year. The Duke of Nevers was sent on special mission to Rome to
procure the holy father's consent to the great heretic's reconciliation
to the Church, and he was instructed to make the king's submission in
terms so wholesale and so abject that even some of the life-long papists
of France were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank
into himself for shame. But Clement, overawed by Philip and his
ambassador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy. He
protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's
conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him. So Nevers
left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather have
lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed into
the Tiber, than bear back such a message. The pope ordered the prelates
who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by the
Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by his
side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening to
kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.

Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a