were well
enough aware of the secret strings of the king's policy, and knew how to
touch them with skill. Of all things past, Henry perhaps most regretted
that not he, but the last and most wretched of the Valois line, was
sovereign of France when the States-General came to Paris with that offer
of sovereignty which had been so contumaciously refused.

If the object were attainable, the ex-chief of the Huguenots still meant
to be king of the Netherlands as sincerely as Philip II. had ever
intended to be monarch of France. But Henry was too accurate a calculator
of chances, and had bustled too much in the world of realities, to
exhaust his strength in striving, year after year, for a manifest
impossibility. The enthusiast, who had passed away at last from the
dreams of the Escorial into the land of shadows, had spent a lifetime,
and melted the wealth of an empire; but universal monarchy had never come
forth from his crucible. The French king, although possessed likewise of
an almost boundless faculty for ambitious visions, was capable of
distinguishing cloud-land from substantial empire. Jeannin, as his envoy,
would at any rate not reveal his master's secret aspirations to those
with whom he came to deal, as openly as Philip had once unveiled himself
to Jeannin.

There could be no doubt that peace at this epoch was the real interest of
France. That kingdom was beginning to flourish again, owing to the very
considerable administrative genius of Bethune, an accomplished financier
according to the lights of the age, and still more by reason of the
general impoverishment of the great feudal houses and of the clergy. The
result of the almost interminable series of civil and religious wars had
been to cause a general redistribution of property. Capital was mainly in
the hands of the middle and lower classes, and the consequence of this
general circulation of wealth through all the channels of society was
precisely what might have been expected, an increase of enterprise and of
productive industry in various branches. Although the financial wisdom of
the age was doing its best to impede commerce, to prevent the influx of
foreign wares, to prohibit the outflow of specie--in obedience to the
universal superstition, which was destined to survive so many centuries,
that gold and silver alone constituted wealth--while, at the same time,
in deference to the idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation, it was
vigorously opposing mulb