bers with gold.

The king was fully aware of the practice, but winked at it, because his
servants, thus paid enormous sums by the public and by foreign
Governments, were less importunate for rewards and salaries from himself.

One man in the kingdom was said to have clean hands, the venerable and
sagacious chancellor, Pomponne de Bellievre. His wife, however, was less
scrupulous, and readily disposed of influence and court-favour for a
price, without the knowledge, so it was thought, of the great judge.

Jeannin, too, was esteemed a man of personal integrity, ancient Leaguer
and tricky politician though he were.

Highest offices of magistracy and judicature, Church and State, were
objects of a traffic almost as shameless as in Spain. The ermine was sold
at auction, mitres were objects of public barter, Church preferments were
bestowed upon female children in their cradles. Yet there was hope in
France, notwithstanding that the Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis, the
foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church, had been annulled by
Francis, who had divided the seamless garment of Church patronage with
Leo.

Those four thousand great Huguenot lords, those thirty thousand
hard-fighting weavers, and blacksmiths, and other plebeians, those seven
hundred and forty churches, those very substantial fortresses in every
province of the kingdom, were better facts than the Holy Inquisition to
preserve a great nation from sinking into the slough of political
extinction.

Henry was most anxious that Sully should convert himself to the ancient
Church, and the gossips of the day told each other that the duke had
named his price for his conversion. To be made high constable of France,
it was said would melt the resolve of the stiff Huguenot. To any other
inducement or blandishment he was adamant. Whatever truth may have been
in such chatter, it is certain that the duke never gratified his master's
darling desire.

Yet it was for no lack of attempts and intrigues on the part of the king,
although it is not probable that he would have ever consented to bestow
that august and coveted dignity upon a Bethune.

The king did his best by intrigue, by calumny, by talebearing, by
inventions, to set the Huguenots against each other, and to excite the
mutual jealousy of all his most trusted adherents, whether Protestant or
Catholic. The most good-humoured, the least vindictive, the most
ungrateful, the falsest of mankind, he made it hi