A mind and character incomprehensible indeed, if corruption, lassitude, listlessness, and fear would not explain the existence of everything that is abnormal and pitiable about human nature in a feeble, cold, and selfish creature, excited, and at the same time worn out, by the business and the pleasures of kingship, which Henry III. could neither do without nor bear the burden of.  His perplexity was extreme in his relations with the other two Henries, who gave, like himself, their name to this war, which was called by contemporaries the war of the three Henries.  The successes of Henry de Guise and of Henry de Bourbon were almost equally disagreeable to Henry de Valois.  It is probable that, if he could have chosen, he would have preferred those of Henry de Bourbon; if they caused him like jealousy, they did not raise in him the same distrust; he knew the King of Navarre’s loyalty, and did not suspect him of aiming to become, whilst he himself was living, King of France.  Besides, he considered the Protestants less powerful and less formidable than the Leaguers.  Henry de Guise, on the contrary, was evidently, in his eyes, an ambitious conspirator, determined to push his own fortunes on to the very crown of France if the chances were favorable to him, and not only armed with all the power of Catholicism, but urged forward by the passions of the League, perhaps further and certainly more quickly than his own intentions travelled.  Since 1584, the Leaguers had, at Paris, acquired strong organization amongst the populace; the city had been partitioned out into five districts under five heads, who, shortly afterwards, added to themselves eleven others, in order that, in the secret council of the association, each amongst the sixteen quarters of Paris might have its representative and director.  Thence the famous Committee of Sixteen, which played so great and so formidable a part in the history of that period.  It was religious fanaticism and democratic fanaticism closely united, and in a position to impose their wills upon their most eminent leaders, upon the Duke of Guise himself.

In vain did Henry III. attempt to resume some sort of authority in Paris; his government, his public and private life, and his person were daily attacked, insulted, and menaced from the elevation of the pulpit and in the public thoroughfares by qualified preachers or mob-orators.  On the 16th of December, 1587, the Sorbonne voted, after a deliberation which, it was said, was to be kept secret, “that the government might be taken away from princes who were found not what they ought to be, just as the administration of a property from a guardian open to suspicion.”  On the 30th of December, the king summoned to the Louvre his court of Parliament and the faculty of theology.  “I know of your precious resolution of the 16th of this month,” said he to the Sorbonne; “I have been requested to take no notice of it, seeing that it was passed after dinner.  I