nce were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank
into himself for shame. But Clement, overawed by Philip and his
ambassador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy. He
protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's
conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him. So Nevers
left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather have
lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed into
the Tiber, than bear back such a message. The pope ordered the prelates
who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by the
Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by his
side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening to
kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.

Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a
still more exhilarating popular spectacle. The heretic had been purified,
confessed, absolved. It was time for a consecration. But there was a
difficulty. Although the fever of loyalty to the ancient house of
Bourbon, now redeemed from its worship of the false gods, was spreading
contagiously through the provinces; although all the white silk in Lyons
had been cut into scarves and banners to celebrate the reconciliation of
the candid king with mother Church; although that ancient city was ablaze
with bonfires and illuminations, while its streets ran red, with blood no
longer, but with wine; and although Madam League, so lately the object of
fondest adoration, was now publicly burned in the effigy of a grizzly
hag; yet Paris still held for that decrepit beldame, and closed its gates
to the Bearnese.

The city of Rheims, too, had not acknowledged the former Huguenot, and it
was at Rheims, in the church of St. Remy, that the Holy Bottle was
preserved. With what chrism, by what prelate, should the consecration of
Henry be performed? Five years before, the League had proposed in the
estates of Blois to place among the fundamental laws of the kingdom that
no king should be considered a legitimate sovereign whose head had not
been anointed by the bishop at Rheims with oil from that holy bottle. But
it was now decided that to ascribe a monopoly of sanctity to that prelate
and to that bottle would be to make a schism in the Church.

Moreover it was discovered that there was a chrism in existence still
more efficacious than the famous oil of St. Rem