only did they both consider themselves in possession of all religious truth, but they also considered themselves entitled to impose it by force upon their adversaries.  The discovery (and the term is used advisedly, so slow to come and so long awaited has been the fact which it expresses), the discovery of the legitimate separation between the intellectual world and the political world, and of the necessity, also, of having the intellectual world free in order that it may not make upon the political world a war which, in the inevitable contact between them, the latter could not support for long, this grand and salutary discovery, be it repeated, and its practical influence in the government of people cannot be realized save in communities already highly enlightened and politically well ordered.  Good order, politically, is indispensable if liberty, intellectually, is to develop itself regularly and do the community more good than it causes of trouble and embarrassment.  They only who have confidence in human intelligence sincerely admit its right to freedom; and confidence in human intelligence is possible only in the midst of a political regimen which likewise gives the human community the guarantees whereof its interests and its lasting security have absolute need.  The sixteenth century was a long way from these conditions of harmony between the intellectual world and the political world, the necessity of which is beginning to be understood and admitted by only the most civilized and best governed amongst modern communities.  It is one of the most tardy and difficult advances that people have to accomplish in their life of labor.  The sixteenth century helped France to make considerable strides in civilization and intellectual development; but the eighteenth and nineteenth have taught her how great still, in the art of governing and being governed as a free people, are her children’s want of foresight and inexperience, and, to what extent they require a strong and sound organization of political freedom in order that they may without danger enjoy intellectual freedom, its pleasures and its glories.

From 1576 to 1588, Henry III. had seen the difficulties of his government continuing and increasing.  His attempt to maintain his own independence and the mastery of the situation between Catholics and Protestants, by making concessions and promises at one time to the former and at another to the latter, had not succeeded; and in 1584 it became still more difficult to practise.  On the 10th of June in that year Henry III.’s brother, the Duke of Anjou, died at Chateau-Thierry.  By this death the leader of the Protestants, Henry, King of Navarre, became lawful heir to the throne of France.  The Leaguers could not stomach that prospect.  The Guises turned it to formidable account.  They did not hesitate to make the future of France a subject of negotiation with Philip II. of Spain, at that time her most dangerous enemy in Europe.