But the lieutenant-general of the realm felt it time for him to show that his authority was not a shadow—­that he was not a pasteboard functionary like the deceased cardinal-king, Charles X. The letters entrusted by the Sixteen to Claude Mathieu were intercepted by Henry, and, very probably, an intimation of their contents was furnished to Mayenne.  At any rate, the duke, who lacked not courage nor promptness when his own interests were concerned, who felt his authority slipping away from him, now that it seemed the object of the Spaniards to bind the democratic party to themselves by a complicity in crime, hastened at once to Paris, determined to crush these intrigues and to punish the murderers of the judges.  The Spanish envoy Ybarra, proud, excitable, violent, who had been privy to the assassinations, and was astonished that the deeds had excited indignation and fury instead of the terror counted upon, remonstrated with Mayenne, intimating that in times of civil commotion it was often necessary to be blind and deaf.

In vain.  The duke carried it with a high and firm hand.  He arrested the ringleaders, and hanged four of them in the basement of the Louvre within twenty days after the commission of their crime.  The energy was well-timed and perfectly successful.  The power of the Sixteen was struck to the earth at a blow.  The ignoble tyrants became in a moment as despicable as they had been formidable and insolent.  Crome, more fortunate than many of his fellows, contrived to make his escape out of the kingdom.

Thus Mayenne had formally broken with the democratic party, so called-with the market-halls oligarchy.  In thus doing, his ultimate rupture with the Spaniards was foreshadowed.  The next combination for him to strive for would be one to unite the moderate Catholics and the Bearnese.  Ah! if Henry would but “instruct” himself out of hand, what a game the duke might play!

The burgess-party, the mild royalists, the disgusted portion of the Leaguers, coalescing with those of the Huguenots whose fidelity might prove stanch even against the religious apostasy contemplated by their chief—­this combination might prove an over-match for the ultra-leaguers, the democrats, and the Spaniards.  The king’s name would be a tower of strength for that “third party,” which began to rear its head very boldly and to call itself “Politica.”  Madam League might succumb to this new rival in the fickle hearts of the French.

At the beginning of the year 1591; Buzanval had presented his credentials to the States-General at the Hague as envoy of Henry IV.  In the speech which he made on this occasion he expressed the hope that the mission of the Viscount Turenne, his Majesty’s envoy to England and to the Netherlands, had made known the royal sentiments towards the States and the great satisfaction of the king with their energetic sympathy and assistance.  It was notorious, said Buzanval, that the King of Spain for many years had