By a secret convention concluded at Joinville on the 31st of December, 1584, between Philip and the Guises, it was stipulated that at the death of Henry III. the crown should pass to Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, sixty-four years of age, the King of Navarre’s uncle, who, in order to make himself king, undertook to set aside his nephew’s hereditary right, and forbid, absolutely, heretical worship in France.  He published on the 31st of March, 1585, a declaration wherein he styled himself premier prince of the blood, and conferred upon the Duke of Guise the title of lieutenant-general of the League.  By a bull of September 10, 1585, Sixtus V., but lately elected pope, excommunicated the King of Navarre as a heretic and relapsed, denying him any right of succession to the crown of France, and releasing his Narvarrese subjects from their oath of fidelity.  Sixtus V. did not yet know what manner of man he was thus attacking.  The King of Navarre did not confine himself to protesting in France, on the 10th of June, 1585, against this act of the pope’s:  he had his protest placarded at Rome itself upon the statues of Pasquin and Marforio, and at the very doors of the Vatican, referring the pope, as to the question of heresy, to a council which he claimed at an early date, and at the same time appealing against this alleged abuse of power to the court of peers of France, “of whom,” said he, “I have the honor to be the premier.”  The whole of Italy, including Sixtus V. himself, a pope of independent mind and proud heart, was struck with this energetic resistance on the part of a petty king.  “It would be a good thing,” said the pope to Marquis Pasani, Henry III.’s ambassador, “if the king your master showed as much resolution against his enemies as the King of Navarre shows against those who attack him.”  At the first moment Henry III. had appeared to unravel the intentions of the League and to be disposed to resist it; by an edict of March 28, 1585, he had ordered that its adherents should be prosecuted; but Catherine de’ Medici frightened him with the war which would infallibly be kindled, and in which he would have for enemies all the Catholics, more irritated than ever.  And Henry III. very easily took fright.  Catherine undertook to manage the recoil for him.  “I care not who likes it and who doesn’t,” she was wont to say in such cases.  She asked the Duke of Guise for an interview, which took place, first of all at Epernay, and afterwards at Rheims.  The hard demands of the Lorrainers did not deter the queen-mother, and, on the 7th of July, 1585, a treaty was concluded at Nemours between Henry III. and the League, to the effect “that by an irrevocable edict the practice of the new religion should be forbidden, and that there should henceforth be no other practice of religion, throughout the realm of France, save that of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman; that all the ministers should depart from the kingdom within a month; that all the subjects of his Majesty should