harles X. The letters entrusted by the
Sixteen to Claude Mathieu were intercepted by Henry, and, very probably,
an intimation of their contents was furnished to Mayenne. At any rate,
the duke, who lacked not courage nor promptness when his own interests
were concerned, who felt his authority slipping away from him, now that
it seemed the object of the Spaniards to bind the democratic party to
themselves by a complicity in crime, hastened at once to Paris,
determined to crush these intrigues and to punish the murderers of the
judges. The Spanish envoy Ybarra, proud, excitable, violent, who had been
privy to the assassinations, and was astonished that the deeds had
excited indignation and fury instead of the terror counted upon,
remonstrated with Mayenne, intimating that in times of civil commotion it
was often necessary to be blind and deaf.

In vain. The duke carried it with a high and firm hand. He arrested the
ringleaders, and hanged four of them in the basement of the Louvre within
twenty days after the commission of their crime. The energy was
well-timed and perfectly successful. The power of the Sixteen was struck
to the earth at a blow. The ignoble tyrants became in a moment as
despicable as they had been formidable and insolent. Crome, more
fortunate than many of his fellows, contrived to make his escape out of
the kingdom.

Thus Mayenne had formally broken with the democratic party, so
called-with the market-halls oligarchy. In thus doing, his ultimate
rupture with the Spaniards was foreshadowed. The next combination for him
to strive for would be one to unite the moderate Catholics and the
Bearnese. Ah! if Henry would but "instruct" himself out of hand, what a
game the duke might play!

The burgess-party, the mild royalists, the disgusted portion of the
Leaguers, coalescing with those of the Huguenots whose fidelity might
prove stanch even against the religious apostasy contemplated by their
chief--this combination might prove an over-match for the ultra-leaguers,
the democrats, and the Spaniards. The king's name would be a tower of
strength for that "third party," which began to rear its head very boldly
and to call itself "Politica." Madam League might succumb to this new
rival in the fickle hearts of the French.

At the beginning of the year 1591; Buzanval had presented his credentials
to the States-General at the Hague as envoy of Henry IV. In the speech
which he made on this occasion he expressed the h