estants
on the other, but both religions were necessary to Henry the Huguenot:
The bold free-thinker adroitly balanced himself upon each creed. In
making use of a stern and conscientious Calvinist, like Maximilian de
Bethune, in his first assault upon the theological professor who now
stood in Elizabeth's place, he showed the exquisite tact which never
failed him. Toleration for the two religions which had political power,
perfect intolerance for all others; despotic forms of polity, except for
two little republics which were to be smothered with protection and never
left out of leading strings, a thorough recasting of governments and
races, a palingenesis of Europe, a nominal partition of its hegemony
between France and England, which was to be in reality absorbed by
France, and the annihilation of Austrian power east and west, these were
the vast ideas with which that teeming Bourbon brain was filled. It is
the instinct both of poetic and of servile minds to associate a sentiment
of grandeur with such fantastic dreams, but usually on condition that the
dreamer wears a crown. When the regenerator of society appears with a
wisp of straw upon his head, unappreciative society is apt to send him
back to his cell. There, at least, his capacity for mischief is limited.

If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do, then the
Dutchmen in Hell's Mouth and the Porcupine fighting Universal Monarchy
inch by inch and pike to pike, or trying conclusions with the ice-bears
of Nova Zembla, or capturing whole Portuguese fleets in the Moluccas,
were effecting as great changes in the world, and doing perhaps as much
for the advancement of civilization, as James of the two Britains and
Henry of France and Navarre in those his less heroic days, were likely to
accomplish. History has long known the results.

The ambassador did his work admirably. The king embraced him in a
transport of enthusiasm, vowed by all that was most sacred to accept the
project in all its details, and exacted from the ambassador in his turn
an oath on the Eucharist never to reveal, except to his master, the
mighty secrets of their conference.

The interview had lasted four hours. When it was concluded, James
summoned Cecil, and in presence of the ambassador and of some of the
counsellors, lectured him soundly on his presumption in disobeying the
royal commands in his recent negotiations with De Rosny. He then
announced his decision to ally himself st