gate the awakened wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal
authority.--At the same time, it found on the whole so many more
difficulties in a cynical and shameless withdrawal from the Treaty of
Hall than in a nominal and tardy fulfilment of its conditions that it
resolved at last to furnish the 8000 foot and 2000 horse promised to the
possessory princes. The next best thing to abandoning entirely even this
little shred, this pitiful remnant, of the splendid designs of Henry was
to so arrange matters that the contingent should be feebly commanded, and
set on foot in so dilatory a manner that the petty enterprise should on
the part of France be purely perfunctory. The grandees of the kingdom had
something more important to do than to go crusading in Germany, with the
help of a heretic republic, to set up the possessory princes. They were
fighting over the prostrate dying form of their common mother for their
share of the spoils, stripping France before she was dead, and casting
lots for her vesture.

Soissons was on the whole in favour of the Cleve expedition. Epernon was
desperately opposed to it, and maltreated Villeroy in full council when
he affected to say a word, insincere as the Duke knew it to be, in favour
of executing agreements signed by the monarch, and sealed with the great
seal of France. The Duke of Guise, finding himself abandoned by the
Queen, and bitterly opposed and hated by Soissons, took sides with his
deaf and dumb and imbecile brother, and for a brief interval the Duke of
Sully joined this strange combination of the House of Lorraine and chiefs
of ancient Leaguers, who welcomed him with transport, and promised him
security.

Then Bouillon, potent by his rank, his possessions, and his authority
among the Protestants, publicly swore that he would ruin Sully and change
the whole order of the government. What more lamentable spectacle, what
more desolate future for the cause of religious equality, which for a
moment had been achieved in France, than this furious alienation of the
trusted leaders of the Huguenots, while their adversaries were carrying
everything before them? At the council board Bouillon quarrelled
ostentatiously with Sully, shook his fist in his face, and but for the
Queen's presence would have struck him. Next day he found that the Queen
was intriguing against himself as well as against Sully, was making a
cat's-paw of him, and was holding secret councils daily from which he as