Then came the triumph in Paris—­hosannahs in the churches, huzzas in the public places—­not for the King, but for Guise.  Paris, more madly in love with her champion than ever, prostrated herself at his feet.  For him paeans as to a deliverer.  Without him the ark would have fallen into the hands of the Philistines.  For the Valois, shouts of scorn from the populace, thunders from the pulpit, anathemas from monk and priest, elaborate invectives from all the pedants of the Sorbonne, distant mutterings of excommunication from Rome—­not the toothless beldame of modern days, but the avenging divinity of priest-rid monarchs.  Such were the results of the edicts of June.  Spain and the Pope had trampled upon France, and the populace in her capital clapped their hands and jumped for joy.  “Miserable country miserable King,” sighed an illustrious patriot, “whom his own countrymen wish rather to survive, than to die to defend him!  Let the name of Huguenot and of Papist be never heard of more.  Let us think only of the counter-league.  Is France to be saved by opening all its gates to Spain?  Is France to be turned out of France, to make a lodging for the Lorrainer and the Spaniard?” Pregnant questions, which could not yet be answered, for the end was not yet.  France was to become still more and more a wilderness.  And well did that same brave and thoughtful lover, of his:  country declare, that he who should suddenly awake from a sleep of twenty-five years, and revisit that once beautiful land, would deem himself transplanted to a barbarous island of cannibals.—­[Duplessis Mornay, ‘Mem.’ iv. 1-34.]

It had now become quite obvious that the game of Leicester was played out.  His career—­as it has now been fully exhibited—­could have but one termination.  He had made himself thoroughly odious to the nation whom he came to govern.  He had lost for ever the authority once spontaneously bestowed; and he had attempted in vain, both by fair means and foul, to recover that power.  There was nothing left him but retreat.  Of this he was thoroughly convinced.  He was anxious to be gone, the republic most desirous to be rid of him, her Majesty impatient to have her favourite back again.  The indulgent Queen, seeing nothing to blame in his conduct, while her indignation, at the attitude maintained by the Provinces was boundless, permitted him, accordingly, to return; and in her letter to the States, announcing this decision, she took a fresh opportunity of emptying her wrath upon their heads.

She told them, that, notwithstanding her frequent messages to them, signifying her evil contentment with their unthankfulness for her exceeding great benefits, and with their gross violations of their contract with herself and with Leicester, whom they had, of their own accord, made absolute governor without her instigation; she had never received any good answer to move, her to commit their sins to oblivion, nor had she remarked, any amendment in their conduct.