f and his nephew, the Duke of Guise.[41] As the spokesman of the
Gallican Church in the following year he delivered a harangue to Charles
IX., in which he declared that Charles had eclipsed the glory of
preceding kings by slaying the false prophets, and especially by the
holy deceit and pious dissimulation with which he had laid his
plans.[42]

There was one man who did not get his knowledge from rumour, and who
could not be deceived by lies. The King's confessor, Sorbin, afterwards
Bishop of Nevers, published in 1574 a narrative of the life and death of
Charles IX. He bears unequivocal testimony that that clement and
magnanimous act, for so he terms it, was resolved upon beforehand, and
he praises the secrecy as well as the justice of his hero.[43]

Early in the year a mission of extraordinary solemnity had appeared in
France. Pius V., who was seriously alarmed at the conduct of Charles,
had sent the Cardinal of Alessandria as Legate to the Kings of Spain and
Portugal, and directed him, in returning, to visit the Court at Blois.
The Legate was nephew to the Pope, and the man whom he most entirely
trusted.[44] His character stood so high that the reproach of nepotism
was never raised by his promotion. Several prelates destined to future
eminence attended him. His chief adviser was Hippolyto Aldobrandini,
who, twenty years later, ascended the papal chair as Clement VIII. The
companion whose presence conferred the greatest lustre on the mission
was the general of the Jesuits, Francis Borgia, the holiest of the
successors of Ignatius, and the most venerated of men then living.
Austerities had brought him to the last stage of weakness; and he was
sinking under the malady of which he was soon to die. But it was
believed that the words of such a man, pleading for the Church, would
sway the mind of the King. The ostensible purpose of the Legate's
journey was to break off the match with Navarre, and to bring France
into the Holy League. He gained neither object. When he was summoned
back to Rome it was understood in France that he had reaped nothing but
refusals, and that he went away disappointed.[45] The jeers of the
Protestants pursued him.[46] But it was sufficiently certain beforehand
that France could not plunge into a Turkish war.[47] The real business
of the Legate, besides proposing a Catholic husband for the Princess,
was to ascertain the object of the expedition which was fitting out in
the Western ports. On both po