s Mornay.

"Were there thirty crowns to win," said he, at about the same time to the
States of France, "I would not change my religion on compulsion, the
dagger at my throat. Instruct me, instruct me, I am not obstinate." There
spoke the wily freethinker, determined not to be juggled out of what he
considered his property by fanatics or priests of either church. Had
Henry been a real devotee, the fate of Christendom might have been
different. The world has long known how much misery it is in the power of
crowned bigots to inflict.

On the other hand, the Holy League, the sacred Confederacy, was catholic
or nothing. Already it was more papist than the pope, and loudly
denounced Sixtus V. as a Huguenot because he was thought to entertain a
weak admiration both for Henry the heretic and for the Jezebel of
England.

But the holy confederacy was bent on destroying the national government
of France, and dismembering the national domain. To do this the pretext
of trampling out heresy and indefinitely extending the power of Rome, was
most influential with the multitude, and entitled the leaders to enjoy
immense power for the time being, while maturing their schemes for
acquiring permanent possession of large fragments of the national
territory. Mayenne, Nemours, Aumale, Mercoeur longed to convert temporary
governments into independent principalities. The Duke of Lorraine looked
with longing eyes on Verdun, Sedan, and, the other fair cities within the
territories contiguous--to his own domains. The reckless house of Savoy;
with whom freebooting and landrobbery seemed geographical, and hereditary
necessities, was busy on the southern borders, while it seemed easy
enough for Philip, II., in right of his daughter, to secure at least the
duchy of Brittany before entering on the sovereignty of the whole
kingdom.

To the eyes of the world at large: France might well seem in a condition
of hopeless disintegration; the restoration of its unity and former
position among the nations, under the government of a single chief, a
weak and wicked dream. Furious and incessant were the anathemas hurled on
the head of the Bearnese for his persistence in drowning the land in
blood in the hope of recovering a national capital which never could be
his, and of wresting from the control of the confederacy that power.
which, whether usurped or rightful, was considered, at least by the
peaceably inclined, to have become a solid fact.

The poor pupp