an approval of every sort of impiety and wicked action, and the parliament
would register it only after repeated commands (on the twenty-seventh of
March), and then with a formal declaration of its reluctance.[259] But no
one was so much disappointed as the admiral. Hastening from Normandy to
Orleans, he reached that city on the twenty-third of March, only to find
that the peace had been fully concluded several days before. In the
council of the confederates, the next day, he spoke his mind freely. He
reminded Conde that, from the very commencement of hostilities, the
triumvirs had offered the restoration of the Edict of January with the
exclusion of the city of Paris; and that never had affairs stood on a
better footing than now,[260] when two of the three chief authors of the
war were dead, and the third was a prisoner. But the poor had surpassed
the rich in devotion; the cities had given the example to the nobles. In
restricting the number of churches to one in a bailiwick, the prince and
his counsellors had ruined more churches by a single stroke of the pen
than all the forces of their enemies could have overthrown in ten years.
Coligny's warm remonstrance was heard with some regret for the
precipitancy with which the arrangement had been made; but it was too
late. The peace was signed. Besides, Conde was confident that he would
soon occupy his brother's place, when the Huguenots would obtain all their
demands.

But while the prince refused to draw back from the articles of peace to
which he had pledged himself, he consented to visit the queen mother in
company with the admiral, and endeavor to remove some of the restrictions
placed upon Protestant worship. And Catharine was too well satisfied with
her success in restoring peace, to refuse the most pressing of the
admiral's requests. However, she took good care that none of her promises
should be in writing, much less be incorporated in the Edict of
Pacification. "The prince and the admyrall," wrote the special envoy
Middlemore to Queen Elizabeth, "have bene twice with the quene mother
since my commynge hyther, where the admirall hath bene very earnest for a
further and larger lybertye in the course of religion, and so hath
obtayned that there shall be preachings within the townes in every
balliage, wheras before yt was accordyd but in the suburbs of townes only,
and that the gentylmen of the visconte and provoste of Parys shall have in
theyr houses the same libertye