so in alliance with heretics, lest he should compromise his soul's
salvation.

But the princes had offered him an irresistible bribe. They
proposed--even declared they thought it right--that the seigneur King
should take possession of those imperial cities which were not Germanic
in language--as Metz, Cambray, Toul, Verdun, and similar ones--and
retain them in quality of vicar of the Holy Empire. As a further
inducement, they promised--having accomplished their own objects--to aid
him with their troops to recover from Charles his heritage of Milan.
This was decisive.

On October 5th a pact was signed with France by the Lutheran elector
Maurice, in his own name and that of the confederate princes, Henry's
ambassador being the Catholic Bishop of Bayonne. Extensive preparations
for war were immediately set on foot and new taxes levied; for the King
had promised aid in money also--a considerable sum monthly as long as
hostilities continued.

He, however, deemed it expedient, before joining his army, to give some
striking proof of his continued orthodoxy; first, by way of
counterbalancing his heretical alliance with the Lutherans and his
infidel one with the Mussulmans; next, to destroy the false hopes
founded on them by French reformers. The heretics, during his absence,
were therefore to be hunted down with the utmost rigor. The Sorbonne was
charged "to examine minutely all books from Geneva, and no unlettered
person was permitted to discuss matters of faith." All cities and
municipalities were strictly enjoined to elect none but good Catholics
to the office of mayor or sheriff, exacting from them a certificate of
Catholicism before entering on the duties of their office. Neglect of
this would subject the electors themselves to the pains and penalties
inflicted on heretics.

A grand inquisitor was appointed to take care of the faith in Lyons, and
the daily burnings on the Place de Greve went on simultaneously with the
preparations in the arsenals, and no less vigorously. Thus the King was
enabled to enter on this war with a safe conscience. Montmorency,[57]
unwilling always to oppose the Emperor, was compelled, lest he should
seem less patriotic than his rivals, to add his voice also in favor of
the project that promised the realization of the views of Charles VII
and Francis I that the natural boundary of France was the Rhine.

To return to Germany and the Emperor--whose complicated affairs are so
entangled with th