he preachers of the League were also, at any rate the majority
of them, covetous as well as fiery; both the former and the latter soon
saw that the Duke of Feria had not wherewith to satisfy them. "And such
as had come," says Villeroi, "with a disposition to favor the Spaniards
and serve them for a consideration, despised them and spoke ill of them,
seeing that there was nothing to be gained from them." The artifices of
Mayenne were scarcely more successful than the stingy presents of
Philip II.; when the Lorrainer duke saw the chances of Spain in the
ascendant as regarded the election of a King of France and the marriage
of the Infanta Isabella, he at once set to work--and succeeded without
much difficulty--to make them a failure; at bottom, it was always for the
house of Lorraine, whether for the marriage of his nephew the Duke of
Guise with the Infanta Isabella or for the prolongation of his power,
that Mayenne labored; he sometimes managed to excite, for the promotion
of this cause, a favorable movement amongst the states-general or a blast
of wrath on the part of the preachers against Henry IV.; but it was
nothing but a transitory and fruitless effort; the wind no longer sat in
the sails of the League; on the 27th of May, 1593, a deputation of a
hundred and twenty burgesses, with the provost of tradesmen at their
head, repaired to the house of Count de Belin, governor of Paris, begging
him to introduce them into the presence of the Duke of Mayenne, to whom
they wished to make a demand for peace, and saying that their request
would, at need, be signed by ten thousand burgesses. Next day, two
colonels of the burgess-militia spoke of making barricades; four days
afterwards, some of the most famous and but lately most popular preachers
of the League were hooted and insulted by the people, who shouted at them
as they passed in the streets that drowning was the due of all those
deputies in the states who prevented peace from being made. The
conference assembled at Suresnes, of which mention has already been
made, had been formed with pacific intentions, or, at any rate, hopes;
accordingly it was more tranquil than the states-general, but it was not
a whit more efficacious. It was composed of thirteen delegates for the
League and eight for the king, men of consideration in the two parties.
At the opening of its sessions, the first time the delegates of the
League repaired thither, a great crowd shouted at them, "Peace!