ith any number of their retainers. Nobles of the second rank
might maintain private worship in their mansions, to which thirty
persons could be admitted. Protestants were pronounced to be eligible
to public office. Their children were to be admitted to the schools,
their sick to the hospitals, and their poor to a share of the public
charities. In a few specified places they were permitted to print
books. Such, in the main, was the celebrated "Edict of Nantes."

The Catholics considered this an enormous and atrocious concession to
deadly heresy. New clamors blazed forth against Henry, as in heart
false to the Church. The Catholic clergy, in one combined voice,
protested against it, and Pope Clement VIII. declared the Edict of
Nantes, which permitted _liberty of conscience to every one, the most
execrable that was ever made_.

It has required centuries of blood and woe to teach even a few
individuals the true principles of religious liberty. Even in
Protestant lands, the masses of the people have not yet fully learned
that lesson. All over Catholic Europe, and all through the realms of
paganism, intolerance still sways her cruel and bloody sceptre. These
miserable religious wars in France, the birth of ignorance,
fanaticism, and depravity, for seventy years polluted the state with
gory scaffolds and blazing stakes. Three thousand millions of dollars
were expended in the senseless strife, and two millions of lives were
thrown away. At the close of the war, one half of the towns and the
majestic castles of beautiful France were but heaps of smouldering
ruins. All industry was paralyzed. The fields were abandoned to weeds
and barrenness. The heart and the mind of the whole nation was
thoroughly demoralized. Poverty, emaciation, and a semi-barbarism
deformed the whole kingdom.

Neither the Catholics nor Protestants were satisfied with the Edict of
Nantes. The Parliament of Paris, composed almost entirely of
Catholics, for a long time refused its ratification. Henry called the
courts before him, and insisted with kindness, but with firmness, that
the edict should be verified.

"Gentlemen," said he, in the long speech which he made upon the
occasion, "there must be no more distinction between Catholics and
Protestants. All must be good Frenchmen. Let the Catholics convert the
Protestants by the example of a good life. I am a shepherd-king, who
will not shed the blood of his sheep, but who will seek to bring them
all with k