As Henry entered the great portal of the church, he found the Archbishop of Bourges, seated in state, effulgent in mitre and chasuble, and surrounded by other magnificent prelates in gorgeous attire.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” said the arch-bishop.

“I am the king,” meekly replied Henry, “and I demand to be received into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church.”

“Do you wish it sincerely?” asked the prelate.

“I wish it with all my heart,” said the king.

Then throwing himself on his knees, the Bearne—­great champion of the Huguenots—­protested before God that he would live and die in the Catholic faith, and that he renounced all heresy.  A passage was with difficulty opened through the crowd, and he was then led to the high altar, amid the acclamations of the people.  Here he knelt devoutly and repeated his protestations.  His unction and contrition were most impressive, and the people, of course, wept piteously.  The king, during the progress of the ceremony, with hands clasped together and adoring the Eucharist with his eyes, or, as the Host was elevated, smiting himself thrice upon the breast, was a model of passionate devotion.

Afterwards he retired to a pavilion behind the altar, where the archbishop confessed and absolved him.  Then the Te Deum sounded, and high mass was celebrated by the Bishop of Nantes.  Then, amid acclamations and blessings, and with largess to the crowd, the king returned to the monastery of Saint Denis, where he dined amid a multitude of spectators, who thronged so thickly around him that his dinner-table was nearly overset.  These were the very Parisians, who, but three years before, had been feeding on rats and dogs and dead men’s bones, and the bodies of their own children, rather than open their gates to this same Prince of Bearne.

Now, although Mayenne had set strong guards at those gates, and had most strictly prohibited all egress, the city was emptied of its populace, which pressed in transports of adoration around the man so lately the object of their hate.  Yet few could seriously believe that much change had been effected in the inner soul of him, whom the legate, and the Spaniard, and the holy father at Rome still continued to denounce as the vilest of heretics and the most infamous of impostors.

The comedy was admirably played out and was entirely successful.  It may be supposed that the chief actor was, however, somewhat wearied.  In private, he mocked at all this ecclesiastical mummery, and described himself as heartily sick of the business.  “I arrived here last evening,” he wrote to the beautiful Gabrielle, “and was importuned with ’God save you’ till bed-time.  In regard to the Leaguers I am of the order of St. Thomas.  I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides those I told you about yesterday.  At this moment of writing I have a hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes.  ’Tis to-morrow that I take the perilous leap.  I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress.”