Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated the appellation of heretic.  A creed, he said, was not to be changed like a shirt, but only on due deliberation, and under special advice.  In his secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the more likely to bear him safely in the battle.  The Bearnese was no Puritan, but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement.  His highest principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle he was ever loyal.  Feeling, too, that it was the interest of France that he should succeed, he was even inspired—­compared with others on the stage—­by an almost lofty patriotism.

Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired good-humour throughout the horrible years which succeeded St. Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned not to wear his heart upon his sleeve.  Without gratitude, without resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with the capacity to use all men’s judgments; without convictions, save in regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities, necessary to success.  He knew how to use his enemies.  He knew how to use his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away.  He refused to assassinate Francis Alencon at the bidding of Henry iii., but he attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of the noblest characters of the age—­whose breast showed twelve scars received in his services—­Agrippa D’Aubigne, because the honest soldier had refused to become his pimp—­a service the King had implored upon his knees.

Beneath the mask of perpetual careless good-humour, lurked the keenest eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will.  Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved.  His wit was as flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword.  Desperate, apparently reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that the world might be brought to recognise a hero and chieftain in a King.  The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins; to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis.  This was shrewd Gascon calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness.  When despatch-writing, invisible Philips, stargazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys, sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that there was a King left who could move about in the bustle and business of the age, and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his cavalry; that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the glorious Virgin who governed England.

Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable, he was born to command, and had a right to reign.  He had need of the throne, and the throne had still more need of him.