And now another envoy appeared upon the scene, an ambassador coming directly from the Emperor.  Count Hohenzollern, a young man, wild, fierce, and arrogant, scarcely twenty-three years of age, arrived in Paris on the 7th of September, with a train of forty horsemen.

De Colly, agent of the Elector-Palatine, had received an outline of his instructions, which the Prince of Anhalt had obtained at Prague.  He informed Henry that Hohenzollern would address him thus:  “You are a king.  You would not like that the Emperor should aid your subjects in rebellion.  He did not do this in the time of the League, although often solicited to do so.  You should not now sustain the princes in disobeying the Imperial decree.  Kings should unite in maintaining the authority and majesty of each other.”  He would then in the Emperor’s name urge the claims of the House of Saxony to the duchies.

Henry was much pleased with this opportune communication by de Colly of the private instructions to the Emperor’s envoy, by which he was enabled to meet the wild and fierce young man with an arrogance at least equal to his own.

The interview was a stormy one.  The King was alone in the gallery of the Louvre, not choosing that his words and gestures should be observed.  The Envoy spoke much in the sense which de Colly had indicated; making a long argument in favour of the Emperor’s exclusive right of arbitration, and assuring the King that the Emperor was resolved on war if interference between himself and his subjects was persisted in.  He loudly pronounced the proceedings of the possessory princes to be utterly illegal, and contrary to all precedent.  The Emperor would maintain his authority at all hazards, and one spark of war would set everything in a blaze within the Empire and without.

Henry replied sternly but in general terms, and referred him for a final answer to his council.

“What will you do,” asked the Envoy, categorically, at a subsequent interview about a month later, “to protect the princes in case the Emperor constrains them to leave the provinces which they have unjustly occupied?”

“There is none but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say,” replied the King.  “It is enough for you to know that I will never abandon my friends in a just cause.  The Emperor can do much for the general peace.  He is not to lend his name to cover this usurpation.”

And so the concluding interview terminated in an exchange of threats rather than with any hope of accommodation.

Hohenzollern used as high language to the ministers as to the monarch, and received payment in the same coin.  He rebuked their course not very adroitly as being contrary to the interests of Catholicism.  They were placing the provinces in the hands of Protestants, he urged.  It required no envoy from Prague to communicate this startling fact.  Friends and foes, Villeroy and Jeannin, as well as Sully and Duplessis, knew well enough that Henry was not taking up arms for Rome.  “Sir! do you look at the matter in that way?” cried Sully, indignantly.  “The Huguenots are as good as the Catholics.  They fight like the devil!”