in France.

The king, although an unscrupulous, self-seeking despot and the coarsest
of voluptuaries, was at least a man of genius. He had also too much
shrewd mother-wit to pursue such schemes as experience had shown to
possess no reality. The talisman "Espoir," emblazoned on his shield, had
led him to so much that it was natural for him at times to think all
things possible.

But he knew how to renounce as well as how to dare. He had abandoned his
hope to be declared Prince of Wales and successor to the English crown,
which he had cherished for a brief period, at the epoch of the Essex
conspiracy; he had forgotten his magnificent dream of placing the crown
of the holy German empire upon his head, and if he still secretly
resolved to annex the Netherlands to his realms, and to destroy his
excellent ally, the usurping, rebellious, and heretic Dutch republic, he
had craft enough to work towards his aim in the dark, and the common
sense to know that by now throwing down the mask he would be for ever
baffled of his purpose.

The history of France, during the last three-quarters of a century, had
made almost every Frenchman, old enough to bear arms, an accomplished
soldier. Henry boasted that the kingdom could put three hundred thousand
veterans into the field--a high figure, when it is recollected that its
population certainly did not exceed fifteen millions. No man however was
better aware than he, that in spite, of the apparent pacification of
parties, the three hundred thousand would not be all on one side, even in
case of a foreign war. There were at least four thousand great feudal
lords as faithful to the Huguenot faith and cause as he had been false to
both; many of them still wealthy, notwithstanding the general ruin which
had swept over the high nobility, and all of them with vast influence and
a splendid following, both among the lesser gentry and the men of lower
rank.

Although he kept a Jesuit priest ever at his elbow, and did his best to
persuade the world and perhaps himself that he had become a devout
Catholic, in consequence of those memorable five hours' instruction from
the Bishop of Bourges, and that there was no hope for France save in its
return to the bosom of the Church, he was yet too politic and too
farseeing to doubt that for him to oppress the Protestants would be not
only suicidal, but, what was worse in his eyes, ridiculous.

He knew, too, that with thirty or forty thousand fighting-men i