Through the wind and the rain came trampling along the dark streets of the capital a body of four thousand troopers and lansquenettes.  Many torch-bearers attended on the procession, whose flambeaux threw a lurid light upon the scene.

There, surrounded by the swart and grizzly bearded visages of these strange men-at-arms, who were discharging their arquebuses, as they advanced upon any bystanders likely to oppose their progress; in the very midst of this sea of helmed heads, the envoy was enabled to recognise the martial figure of the Prince of Bearne.  Armed to the teeth, with sword in hand and dagger at side, the hero of Ivry rode at last through the barriers which had so long kept him from his capital. “’Twas like enchantment,” said Ybarra.  The first Bourbon entered the city through the same gate out of which the last Valois had, five years before, so ignominiously fled.  It was a midnight surprise, although not fully accomplished until near the dawn of day.  It was not a triumphal entrance; nor did Henry come as the victorious standard-bearer of a great principle.  He had defeated the League in many battle-fields, but the League still hissed defiance at him from the very hearthstone of his ancestral palace.  He had now crept, in order to conquer, even lower than the League itself; and casting off his Huguenot skin at last, he had soared over the heads of all men, the presiding genius of the holy Catholic Church.

Twenty-one years before, he had entered the same city on the conclusion of one of the truces which had varied the long monotony of the religious wars of France.  The youthful son of Antony Bourbon and Joan of Albret had then appeared as the champion and the idol of the Huguenots.  In the same year had come the fatal nuptials with the bride of St. Bartholomew, the first Catholic conversion of Henry and the massacre at which the world still shudders.

Now he was chief of the “Politicians,” and sworn supporter of the Council of Trent.  Earnest Huguenots were hanging their heads in despair.

He represented the principle of national unity against national dismemberment by domestic treason and foreign violence.  Had that principle been his real inspiration, as it was in truth his sole support, history might judge him more leniently.  Had he relied upon it entirely it might have been strong enough to restore him to the throne of his ancestors, without the famous religious apostacy with which his name is for ever associated.  It is by no means certain that permanent religious toleration might not have been the result of his mounting the throne, only when he could do so without renouncing the faith of his fathers.  A day of civilization may come perhaps, sooner or later, when it will be of no earthly cousequence to their fellow creatures to what creed, what Christian church, what religious dogma kings or humbler individuals may be partial; when the relations between man and his Maker shall be undefiled by political or social intrusion.  But the day will never come when it will be otherwise than damaging to public morality and humiliating to human dignity to forswear principle for a price, and to make the most awful of mysteries the subject of political legerdemain and theatrical buffoonery.