, time-honoured La None with the iron arm stood near the gate
and harangued the Parisians. "We are here," said he, "five thousand
gentlemen; we desire your good, not your ruin. We will make you rich: let
us participate in your labour and industry. Undo not yourselves to serve
the ambition of a few men." The townspeople hearing the old warrior
discoursing thus earnestly, asked who he was. When informed that it was
La Noue they cheered him vociferously, and applauded his speech with the
greatest vehemence. Yet La Noue was the foremost Huguenot that the sun
shone upon, and the Parisians were starving themselves to death out of
hatred to heresy. After the collation the commissioners were permitted to
go from the camp in order to consult Mayenne.

Such then was the condition of Paris during that memorable summer of
tortures. What now were its hopes of deliverance out of this Gehenna? The
trust of Frenchmen was in Philip of Spain, whose legions, under command
of the great Italian chieftain, were daily longed for to save them from
rendering obedience to their lawful prince.

For even the king of straw--the imprisoned cardinal--was now dead, and
there was not even the effigy of any other sovereign than Henry of
Bourbon to claim authority in France. Mayenne, in the course of long
interviews with the Duke of Parma at Conde and Brussels, had expressed
his desire to see Philip king of France, and had promised his best
efforts to bring about such a result. In that case he stipulated for the
second place in the kingdom for himself, together with a good rich
province in perpetual sovereignty, and a large sum of money in hand.
Should this course not run smoothly, he would be willing to take the
crown himself, in which event he would cheerfully cede to Philip the
sovereignty of Brittany and Burgundy, besides a selection of cities to be
arranged for at a later day. Although he spoke of himself with modesty,
said Alexander, it was very plain that he meant to arrive at the crown
himself: Well had the Bearnese alluded to the judgment of Solomon. Were
not children, thus ready to dismember their mother, as foul and unnatural
as the mother who would divide her child?

And what was this dependence on a foreign tyrant really worth? As we look
back upon those dark days with the light of what was then the almost
immediate future turned full and glaring upon them, we find it difficult
to exaggerate the folly of the chief actors in those scenes of