.
Not peace, but a firebrand--'facem, non pacem'--had the King held forth
to his subjects.

When the news came to Henry of Navarre that the King had really
promulgated this fatal edict, he remained for a time, with amazement and
sorrow, leaning heavily upon a table, with his face in his right hand.
When he raised his head again--so he afterwards asserted--one side of his
moustachio had turned white.

Meantime Gregory XIII., who had always refused to sanction the League,
was dead, and Cardinal Peretti, under the name of Sixtus V., now reigned
in his place. Born of an illustrious house, as he said--for it was a
house without a roof--this monk of humble origin was of inordinate
ambition. Feigning a humility which was but the cloak to his pride, he
was in reality as grasping, self-seeking, and revengeful, as he seemed
gentle and devout. It was inevitable that a pontiff of this character
should seize the opportunity offered him to mimic Hildebrand, and to
brandish on high the thunderbolts of the Church.

With a flaming prelude concerning the omnipotence delegated by Almighty
God to St. Peter and his successors--an authority infinitely superior to
all earthly powers--the decrees of which were irresistible alike by the
highest and the meanest, and which hurled misguided princes from their
thrones into the abyss, like children of Beelzebub, the Pope proceeded to
fulminate his sentence of excommunication against those children of
wrath, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Conde. They were denounced as
heretics, relapsed, and enemies of God (28th Aug.1585). The King was
declared dispossessed of his principality of Bearne, and of what remained
to him of Navarre. He was stripped of all dignities, privileges, and
property, and especially proclaimed incapable of ever ascending the
throne of France.

The Bearnese replied by a clever political squib. A terse and spirited
paper found its way to Rome, and was soon affixed, to the statutes of
Pasquin and Marforio, and in other public places of that city, and even
to the gates of the papal palace. Without going beyond his own doors, his
Holiness had the opportunity of reading, to his profound amazement, that
Mr. Sixtus, calling himself Pope, had foully and maliciously lied in
calling the King of Navarre a heretic. This Henry offered to prove before
any free council legitimately chosen. If the Pope refused to submit to
such decision, he was himself no better than excommunicate and
Antichrist