, denouncing all these attempts
on the part of the heretic, and his friends, and urging that it was much
better for Rome that the pernicious kingdom of France should be
dismembered and subdivided, assured his holiness that Rome should be
starved, occupied, annihilated, if such abominable schemes should be for
an instant favoured.

Clement took to his bed with sickness brought on by all this violence,
but had nothing for it but to meet Pisani and other agents of the same
cause with a peremptory denial, and send most, stringent messages to his
legate in Paris, who needed no prompting.

There had already been much issuing of bulls by the pope, and much
burning of bulls by the hangman, according to decrees of the parliament
of Chalons and other friendly tribunals, and burning of Chalons decrees
by Paris hangmen, and edicts in favour of Protestants at Nantz and other
places--measures the enactment, repeal, and reenactment of which were to
mark the ebb and flow of the great tide of human opinion on the most
important of subjects, and the traces of which were to be for a long time
visible on the shores of time.

Early in 1593 Mayenne, yielding to the pressure of the Spanish party,
reluctantly consented to assemble the States-General of France, in order
that a king might be chosen. The duke, who came to be thoroughly known to
Alexander Farnese before the death of that subtle Italian, relied on his
capacity to outwit all the other champions of the League and agents of
Philip now that the master-spirit had been removed. As firmly opposed as
ever to the election of any other candidate but himself, or possibly his
son, according to a secret proposition which he had lately made to the
pope, he felt himself obliged to confront the army of Spanish
diplomatists, Roman prelates, and learned doctors, by whom it was
proposed to exclude the Prince of Bearne from his pretended rights. But
he did not, after all, deceive them as thoroughly as he imagined. The
Spaniards shrewdly suspected the French tactics, and the whole business
was but a round game of deception, in which no one was much deceived, who
ever might be destined ultimately, to pocket the stakes: "I know from a
very good source," said Fuentes, "that Mayenne, Guise, and the rest of
them are struggling hard in order not to submit to Bearne, and will
suffer everything your Majesty may do to them, even if you kick them in
the mouth, but still there is no conclusion on the road we ar