partizan by most liberal offers, for he felt bitterly the
mistake he had made in alienating so formidable a freebooter. But the
truculent Martin remained obdurate and irascible. Philip, much offended
that the news of his decease had proved false, ordered rather than
requested the Emperor Rudolph to have a care that nothing was done in
Germany to interfere with the great design upon England. The King gave
warning that he would suffer no disturbance from that quarter, but
certainly the lethargic condition of Germany rendered such threats
superfluous. There were riders enough, and musketeers enough, to be sold
to the highest bidder. German food for powder was offered largely in the
market to any foreign consumer, for the trade in their subjects', lives
was ever a prolific source of revenue to the petty sovereigns--numerous
as the days of the year--who owned Germany and the Germans.

The mercenaries who had so recently been, making their inglorious
campaign in France had been excluded from that country at the close of
1587, and furious were the denunciations of the pulpits and the populace
of Paris that the foreign brigands who had been devastating the soil of
France, and attempting to oppose the decrees of the Holy Father of Rome,
should; have made their escape so easily. Rabid Lincestre and other
priests and monks foamed with rage, as they execrated and anathematized
the devil-worshipper Henry of Valois, in all the churches of that
monarch's capital. The Spanish ducats were flying about, more profusely
than ever, among the butchers and porters, and fishwomen, of the great
city; and Madam League paraded herself in the day-light with still
increasing insolence. There was scarcely a pretence at recognition of any
authority, save that of Philip and Sixtus. France had become a
wilderness--an uncultivated, barbarous province of Spain. Mucio--Guise
had been secretly to Rome, had held interviews with the Pope and
cardinals, and had come back with a sword presented by his Holiness, its
hilt adorned with jewels, and its blade engraved with tongues of fire.
And with this flaming sword the avenging messenger of the holy father was
to smite the wicked, and to drive them into outer darkness.

And there had been fresh conferences among the chiefs of the sacred
League within the Lorraine territory, and it was resolved to require of
the Valois an immediate extermination of heresy and heretics throughout
the kingdom, the publication of th