in the good towns; that important places should be put into the hands of specified chiefs, who should have the power of constructing fortifications there; that heretics should be taxed a third, or at the least, a fourth of their property as long as the war lasted; and, lastly, that the life should be spared of no enemy taken prisoner, unless upon his swearing and finding good surety to live as a Catholic, and upon paying in ready money the worth of his property if it had not already been sold.  These monstrous proposals, drawn up in eleven articles, were immediately carried to the king.  He did not reject them, but he demanded and took time to discuss them with the authors.  The negotiation was prolonged; the ferment in Paris was redoubled; the king, it was said, meant to withdraw; his person must be secured; the Committee of Sixteen took measures to that end; one of its members got into his hands the keys of the gate of St. Denis.  From Soissons, where he was staying, the Duke of Guise sent to Paris the Count of Brissac, with four other captains of the League, to hold themselves in readiness for any event, and he ordered his brother the Duke of Aumale to stoutly maintain his garrisons in the places of Picardy, which the king, it was said, meant to take from him.  “If the king leaves Paris,” the duke wrote to Bernard de Mendoza, Philip II.’s ambassador in France, “I will make him think about returning thither before he has gone a day’s march towards the Picards.”  Philip II. made Guise an offer of three hundred thousand crowns, six thousand lanzknechts, and twelve hundred lances, as soon as he should have broken with Henry III.  “The abscess will soon burst,” wrote the ambassador to the king his master.

On the 8th of May, 1588, at eleven P. M., the Duke of Guise set out from Soissons, after having commended himself to the prayers of the convents in the town.  He arrived the next morning before Paris, which he entered about midday by the gate of St. Martin.  The Leaguers had been expecting him for several days.  Though he had covered his head with his cloak, he was readily recognized and eagerly cheered; the burgesses left their houses and the tradesmen their shops to see him and follow him, shouting, “Hurrah! for Guise; hurrah! for the pillar of the church!” The crowd increased at every step.  He arrived in front of the palace of Catherine de’ Medici, who had not expected him, and grew pale at sight of him.  “My dear cousin,” said she to him, “I am very glad to see you, but I should have been better pleased at another time.”  “Madame, I am come to clear myself from all the calumnies of my enemies; do me the honor to conduct me to the king yourself.”  Catherine lost no time in giving the king warning by one of her secretaries.  On receipt of this notice, Henry III., who had at first been stolid—­and silent, rose abruptly from his chair.  “Tell my lady mother that, as she wishes to present the Duke of Guise to me, I will receive him in the chamber of the queen my wife.”