the prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest questions about the religion he was just embracing, asking them for more satisfactory explanations on certain points, and repeating to them the grounds of his resolution.  “I am moved with compassion at the misery and calamities of my people; I have discovered what they desire; and I wish to be enabled, with a safe conscience, to content them.”  At the end of the conference, “Gentlemen,” he said, “I this day commit my soul to your keeping; I pray you, take heed to it, for, wheresoever you are causing me to enter, I shall never more depart till death; that I swear and protest to you;” and, in a voice of deep emotion, his eyes dim with tears, “I desire no further delay; I wish to be received on Sunday and go to mass; draw up the profession of faith you think I ought to make, and bring it to me this evening; “when the Archbishop of Bourges and the Bishops of Le Mans and Evreux brought it to him on the Saturday morning, he discussed it apart with them, demanding the cutting out of some parts which struck too directly at his previous creed and life; and Chancellor de Chiverny and two presidents of the Parliament, Harlay and Groulart, used their intervention to have him satisfied.  The profession of faith was modified.  Next day, Sunday, the 25th of July, before he got up, Henry conversed with the Protestant minister Anthony de la Faye, and embraced him two or three times, repeating to him the words already quoted, “I have made myself anathema for the sake of all, like Moses and St. Paul.”  A painful mixture of the frivolous and the serious, of sincerity and captious reservations, of resolution and weakness, at which nobody has any right to be shocked who is not determined to be pitiless towards human nature, and to make no allowance in the case of the best men for complication of the facts, ideas, sentiments, and duties, under the influence of which they are often obliged to decide and to act.

[Illustration:  Henry IV.’s Abjuration——­56]

On Sunday the 25th of July, 1593, Henry IV. repaired in great state to the church of St. Denis.  On arriving with all his train in front of the grand entrance, he was received by Reginald de Beaune, Archbishop of Bourges, the nine bishops, the doctors and the incumbents who had taken part in the conferences, and all the brethren of the abbey.  “Who are you?” asked the archbishop who officiated.  “The king.”  “What want you?” “To be received into the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.”  “Do you desire it?” “Yes, I will and desire it.”  At these words the king knelt and made the stipulated profession of faith.  The archbishop gave him absolution together with benediction; and, conducted by all the clergy to the choir of the church, he there, upon the gospels, repeated his oath, made his confession, heard mass, and was fully reconciled with the church.  The inhabitants of Paris, dispensing with the passports which were refused them by Mayenne,