offer themselves.  Villeroi, having broken with the League, had become Henry IV.’s minister of foreign affairs, and obtained some confidence at Rome in return for the good will he testified towards the papacy.  By his councillor’s advice, no doubt, the king made no official stir, sent no brilliant embassy; D’Ossat quietly resumed negotiations, and alone conducted them from the end of 1594 to the spring of 1595; and when a new envoy was chosen to bring them to a conclusion, it was not a great lord, but a learned ecclesiastic, Abbot James du Perron, whose ability and devotion Henry IV. had already, at the time of his conversion, experienced, and whom he had lately appointed Bishop of Evreux.  Even when Du Perron had been fixed upon to go to Rome and ask for the absolution which Clement VIII. had seven or eight months before refused, he was in no hurry to repair thither, and D’Ossat’s letters make it appear that he was expected there with some impatience.  He arrived there on the 12th of July, 1595, and, in concert with D’Ossat, he presented to the pope the request of the king, who solicited the papal benediction, absolution from any censure, and complete reconciliation with the Roman church.  Clement VIII., on the 2d of August, assembled his consistory, whither went all the cardinals, save two partisans of Spain who excused themselves on the score of health.  Parleys took place as to the form of the decree which must precede the absolution.  The pope would have liked very much to insert two clauses, one revoking as null and void the absolution already given to the king by the French bishops at the time of his conversion, and the other causing the absolution granted by the pope to be at the same time considered as re-establishing Henry IV. in his rights to the crown, whereof it was contended that he was deprived by the excommunication and censures of Sixtus V. and Gregory XIV., which this absolution was to remove.  The two French negotiators rejected these attempts, and steadily maintained the complete independence of the king’s temporal sovereignty, as well as the power of intervention of the French episcopate in his absolution.  Clement VIII. was a judicious and prudent pope; and he did not persist.  The absolution was solemnly pronounced on the 17th of September, 1595, by the pope himself, from a balcony erected in St. Peter’s Square, and in presence of the population.  The gates of the church were thrown open and a Te Deum was sung.  A grand ceremony took place immediately afterwards in the church of St. Louis of the French.  Rome was illuminated for three days, and, on the 7th of November following, a pope’s messenger left for Paris with the bull of absolution drawn up in the terms agreed upon.