that this prince could not escape Mayenne.  Already a host of idle and credulous women had been at the pains of engaging windows, which they let very dear, and which they had fitted up magnificently, to see the passage of that fanciful triumph for which their mad hopes had caused them to make every preparation—­before the victory.”  Henry left some of his lieutenants to carry on the war in the environs of Paris, and himself repaired, on the 21st of November, to Tours, where the royalist Parliament, the exchequer-chamber, the court of taxation, and all the magisterial bodies which had not felt inclined to submit to the despotism of the League, lost no time in rendering him homage, as the head and the representative of the national and the lawful cause.  He reigned and ruled, to real purpose, in the eight principal provinces of the North and Centre—­Ile-de-France, Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, Orleanness, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou; and his authority, although disputed, was making way in nearly all the other parts of the kingdom.  He made war not like a conqueror, but like a king who wanted to meet with acceptance in the places which he occupied and which he would soon have to govern.  The inhabitants of Le Mans and of Alencon were able to reopen their shops on the very day on which their town fell into his hands, and those of Vendome the day after.  He watched to see that respect was paid by his soldiers, even the Huguenots, to Catholic churches and ceremonies.  Two soldiers, having made their way into Le Mans, contrary to orders, after the capitulation, and having stolen a chalice, were hanged on the spot, though they were men of acknowledged bravery.  He protected carefully the bishops and all the ecclesiastics who kept aloof from political strife.  “If minute details are required,” says a contemporary pamphleteer, “out of a hundred or a hundred and twenty archbishops or bishops existing in the realm of France not a tenth part approve of the counsels of the League.”  It was not long before Henry reaped the financial fruits of his protective equity; at the close of 1589 he could count upon a regular revenue of more than two millions of crowns, very insufficient, no doubt, for the wants of his government, but much beyond the official resources of his enemies.  He had very soon taken his proper rank in Europe:  the Protestant powers which had been eager to recognize him—­England, Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, and Reformed Germany—­had been joined by the republic of Venice, the most judiciously governed state at that time in Europe, but solely on the ground of political interests and views, independently of any religious question.  On the accession of Henry iv., his ambassador, Hurault de Maisse, was received and very well treated at Venice; he was merely excluded from religious ceremonies:  the Venetian people joined in the policy of their government; the portrait of the new King of France was everywhere displayed