d out these hangings in a summary manner; and the
first care of the Parlement, when a government was partially established
again, was to disarm the factious bourgeois.

Henri IV, who disputes with Dagobert in the legends of the people the
honor of being the most popular of the French kings, was not exclusively
the jovial monarch he is generally portrayed. His answer to some
remonstrances of the Parlement, which have been preserved, would have
been worthy of Francois I or Louis XIV. "My will should serve as a
reason. In an obedient State, reasons are never required of the prince.
I am king: I speak to you as a king; I desire to be obeyed." His
nomination of a governor of Paris was sufficiently scandalous: on the
death of the Sieur d'O, who held that office, the king sent to the Hotel
de Ville to say that he would not appoint a successor, that he would
honor his good city of Paris by assuming that charge himself; the
Parlement, the next day, despatched several of its presidents and
members to thank the king for this great honor, and the gracious monarch
thereupon nominated as his lieutenant-general Antoine d'Estrees, the
father of his famous mistress.

[Illustration: OFFICIAL RESIDENCE OF THE PRESIDENT. ENTRANCE TO THE
PALAIS DE L'ELYSEE FROM THE RUE DU FAUBOURG SAINT-HONORE.]

Nevertheless, so heavy and far-reaching a calamity was his assassination
by the senseless fanatic Ravaillac, that forerunner of the socialists
and anarchists of our own day, that a certain pitiless logic attends the
frightful sentence which was pronounced upon the murderer, and which was
carried out to the letter. Thirteen days after the fatal 14th of May,
1610, the Parlement pronounced the following judgment: "The Court, etc.,
after attentive consideration, declares that it has been that the Court
has declared and declares the aforesaid Ravaillac attainted and
convicted of the crime of lese-majeste, divine and human, in the first
degree, for the very wicked, very abominable, and very detestable
parricide committed on the person of the late king Henri IV, of very
good and very laudable memory; in reparation of which it has condemned
and condemns him to make _amende honorable_ before the principal door of
the Church of Paris, to which he shall be led and conducted in a cart;
there, naked in his shirt, holding a burning torch of the weight of two
pounds, to say and to declare that, wickedly and treacherously, he
committed the very wicked, very abom