ion, and satisfy all parties. He either had no
deep religious convictions, like Coligny and Dandelot, or he preferred
an undisturbed crown to the ascendency of the religion for which he had
so bravely fought. What matter, the tempter said, whether he reigned as
a Catholic or Protestant monarch, so long as religious liberty was given
to his subjects? Could he have reigned forever, could he have been
assured of the toleration of his successors, this plea might have had
some force; but it was the dictate of expediency, and no man can predict
its ultimate results. He was not a religious man, although he was the
leader of the Protestant party. He was far from being even moral in his
social relations; still less had he the austerity of manners and habits
that then characterized the Huguenots, for they were Calvinists and
Presbyterians. He was gallant, brave, generous, magnanimous, and
patriotic,--the model of a gentleman, the impersonation of chivalry, the
charm of his friends, the idol of his army, the glory of his country;
but there his virtues stopped. He was more of a statesman than the
leader of a party. He wanted to see France united and happy and
prosperous more than he wanted to see the ascendency of the Huguenots.
He was now not the King of Navarre,--a small country, scarcely thirty
miles long,--but the King of France, ruling, as he aspired, from the
Pyrenees to the Rhine. So it is not strange that he was governed by the
principles of expediency, as most monarchs are. He wished to aggrandize
his monarchy; that aim was dearer to him than the reformed faith.
Coligny would have fought to the bitter end to secure the triumph of the
Protestant cause; but Henry was not so lofty a man as the Admiral,--he
had not his religious convictions, or stern virtues, or incorruptible
life. He was a gallant monarch, an able general, a far-reaching
statesman, yet fond of pleasure and of the glories of a court.

So Henry made up his mind to abjure his faith. On Sunday the 25th of
July, 1593, clad not in helmet and cuirass and burnished steel, as at
Ivry, but in a doublet of white satin, and a velvet coat ornamented with
jewels and orders and golden fleurs de lis, and followed by cardinals
and bishops and nobles, he entered the venerable Abbey of St. Denis,
where reposed the ashes of all his predecessors, from Dagobert to Henry
III, and was received into the bosom of the Catholic Church. A solemn Te
Deum was then chanted by unnumbered prie