L’Estoile relates that the king’s favorite, Gabrielle d’Estrees, was at the session behind some tapestry, and that, Henry IV. having asked what she thought of his speech, she answered, “I never heard better spoken; only I was astonished that you spoke of placing yourself under guardianship.”  “Ventre saint-gris,” replied the king, “that is true; but I mean with my sword by my side.” [Journal de Pierre l’Estoile, t. iii. p. 185.]

The assembly of notables sat from November 4, 1596, to January 29, 1597, without introducing into the financial regimen any really effective reforms; the rating board (conseil de raison), the institution of which they had demanded of the king, in connection with the fixing of imposts and employment of public revenues, was tried without success, and was not long before, of its own accord, resigning its power into the king’s hands; but the mere convocation of this assembly was a striking instance of the homage paid by Henry IV. to that fundamental maxim of free government, which, as early as under Louis XI., Philip de Commynes expressed in these terms:  “There is no king or lord on earth who hath power, over and above his own property, to put a single penny on his subjects without grant and consent of those who have to pay, unless by tyranny and violence.”  The ideas expressed and the counsels given by the assembly of notables were not, however, without good effect upon the general administration of the state; but the principal and most salutary result of its presence and influence was the personal authority which Sully drew from it, and of which he did not hesitate to make full use.  Having become superintendent-general of finance and grand master of the ordnance, he exerted all his power to put in practice, as regarded the financial department, a system of receipts and expenses, and as regarded materials for the service of war, the reforms and maxims of economy, accountability, and supervision, which were suggested to him by his great good sense, and in which Henry IV. supported him with the spirit of one who well appreciated the strength they conferred upon his government, civil and military.

His relations with the Protestants gave him embarrassments to surmount and reforms to accomplish of quite a different sort, and more difficult still.  At his accession, their satisfaction had not been untinged by disquietude; they foresaw the sacrifices the king would be obliged to make to his new and powerful friends the Catholics.  His conversion to Catholicism threw into more or less open opposition the most zealous and some of the ambitious members of his late church.  It was not long before their feelings burst forth in reproaches, alarms, and attacks.  In 1597, a pamphlet, entitled The Plaints of the Reformed Churches of France [Memoires de la Ligue, t. vi. pp. 428-486], was published and spread prodigiously.  “None can take it ill,” said the anonymous author, “that we who make profession of the