of his right hand for a battle, and two for a general peace.  He knew and pitied the sufferings of Paris, but the horrors now raging there were to please the King of Spain.  That monarch had told the Duke of Parma to trouble himself but little about the Netherlands so long as he could preserve for him his city of Paris.  But it was to lean on a broken reed to expect support from this old, decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to the Indies.  The crown was his own birthright.  Were it elective he should receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors.  He hoped soon to drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom.  Should he fail, they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest who had called them in, and Paris would become the theatre of the bloodiest tragedy ever yet enacted.  The king then ordered Sir Roger Williams to see that a collation was prepared for the deputies, and the veteran Welshman took occasion to indulge in much blunt conversation with the guests.  He informed them that he, Mr. Sackville, and many other strangers were serving the king from the hatred they bore the Spaniards and Mother League, and that his royal mistress had always 8000 Englishmen ready to maintain the cause.

While the conferences were going on, the officers and soldiers of the besieging army thronged to the gate, and had much talk with the townsmen.  Among others, time-honoured La None with the iron arm stood near the gate and harangued the Parisians.  “We are here,” said he, “five thousand gentlemen; we desire your good, not your ruin.  We will make you rich:  let us participate in your labour and industry.  Undo not yourselves to serve the ambition of a few men.”  The townspeople hearing the old warrior discoursing thus earnestly, asked who he was.  When informed that it was La Noue they cheered him vociferously, and applauded his speech with the greatest vehemence.  Yet La Noue was the foremost Huguenot that the sun shone upon, and the Parisians were starving themselves to death out of hatred to heresy.  After the collation the commissioners were permitted to go from the camp in order to consult Mayenne.

Such then was the condition of Paris during that memorable summer of tortures.  What now were its hopes of deliverance out of this Gehenna?  The trust of Frenchmen was in Philip of Spain, whose legions, under command of the great Italian chieftain, were daily longed for to save them from rendering obedience to their lawful prince.

For even the king of straw—­the imprisoned cardinal—­was now dead, and there was not even the effigy of any other sovereign than Henry of Bourbon to claim authority in France.  Mayenne, in the course of long interviews with the Duke of Parma at Conde and Brussels, had expressed his desire to see Philip king of France, and had promised his best efforts to bring about such a result.  In