25th of July, 1593, Henry IV. repaired in great state to
the church of St. Denis. On arriving with all his train in front of the
grand entrance, he was received by Reginald de Beaune, Archbishop of
Bourges, the nine bishops, the doctors and the incumbents who had taken
part in the conferences, and all the brethren of the abbey. "Who are
you?" asked the archbishop who officiated. "The king." "What want you?"
"To be received into the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
Church." "Do you desire it?" "Yes, I will and desire it." At these
words the king knelt and made the stipulated profession of faith. The
archbishop gave him absolution together with benediction; and, conducted
by all the clergy to the choir of the church, he there, upon the gospels,
repeated his oath, made his confession, heard mass, and was fully
reconciled with the church. The inhabitants of Paris, dispensing with
the passports which were refused them by Mayenne, had flocked in masses
to St. Denis and been present at the ceremony. The vaulted roof of the
church resounded with their shouts of Hurrah for the king! There was the
same welcome on the part of the dwellers in the country when Henry
repaired to the valley of Montmorency and to Montmartre to perform his
devotions there. Here, then, was religious peace, a prelude to political
reconciliation between the monarch and the great majority of his
subjects.

CHAPTER XXXVI.----HENRY IV., CATHOLIC KING. (1593-1610.)

During the months, weeks, nay, it might be said, days immediately
mediately following Henry IV.'s abjuration, a great number of notable
persons and important towns, and almost whole provinces, submitted to the
Catholic king. Henry was reaping the fruits of his decision; France was
flocking to him. But the general sentiments of a people are far from
satisfying and subduing the selfish passions of the parties which have
taken form and root in its midst. Religious and political peace
responded to and sufficed for the desires of the great majority of
Frenchmen, Catholic and Protestant; but it did not at all content the
fanatics, Leaguer or Huguenot. The former wanted the complete
extirpation of heretics; the latter the complete downfall of Catholicism.
Neither these nor those were yet educated up to the higher principle of
religious peace, distinction between the civil and the intellectual
order, freedom of thought and of faith guaranteed by political liberty.
Even at