It was very obvious to the most superficial observer, that the manifesto was directed almost as much against the reigning sovereign as against Henry of Navarre.  The adherents of the Guise faction, and especially certain theologians in their employ, had taken very bold grounds upon the relations between king and subjects, and had made the public very familiar with their doctrines.  It was a duty, they said, “to depose a prince who did not discharge his duty.  Authority ill regulated was robbery, and it was as absurd to call him a king who knew not how to govern, as it was to take a blind man for a guide, or to believe that a statue could influence the movements of living men.”

Yet to the faction, inspired by such rebellious sentiments, and which was thundering in his face such tremendous denunciations, the unhappy Henry could not find a single royal or manly word of reply.  He threw himself on his knees, when, if ever, he should have assumed an attitude of command.  He answered the insolence of the men, who were parading their contempt for his authority, by humble excuses, and supplications for pardon.  He threw his crown in the dust before their feet, as if such humility would induce them to place it again upon his head.  He abandoned the minions who had been his pride, his joy, and his defence, and deprecated, with an abject whimper, all responsibility for the unmeasured ambition and the insatiable rapacity of a few private individuals.  He conjured the party-leaders, who had hurled defiance in his face, to lay down their arms, and promised that they should find in his wisdom and bounty more than all the advantages which they were seeking to obtain by war.

Henry of Navarre answered in a different strain.  The gauntlet had at last been thrown down to him, and he came forward to take it up; not insolently nor carelessly, but with the cold courtesy of a Christian knight and valiant gentleman.  He denied the charge of heresy.  He avowed detestation of all doctrines contrary to the Word of God, to the decrees of the Fathers of the Church, or condemned by the Councils.

The errors and abuses which had from time to time crept into the church, had long demanded, in the opinion of all pious persons, some measures of reform.  After many bloody wars, no better remedy had been discovered to arrest the cause of these dire religious troubles, whether in France or Germany, than to permit all men to obey the dictates of their own conscience.  The Protestants had thus obtained in France many edicts by which the peace of the kingdom had been secured.  He could not himself be denounced as a heretic, for he had always held himself ready to receive instruction, and to be set right where he had erred.  To call him “relapsed” was an outrage.  Were it true, he were indeed unworthy of the crown, but the world knew that his change at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been made under duresse, and that he had returned to the reformed faith when he had recovered