Marly 525

Colonnade of the Louvre 525a

The Louvre and the Tuileries 525b

Versailles 526

Vauban 534

The Torture of the Huguenots 552

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 556

Death of Roland the Camisard 569

Abbey of Port-Royal 580

Reading the Decree 581

Bossuet 591

Blaise Pascal 597

Fenelon and the Duke of Burgundy 610

La Rochefoucauld and his fair Friends 629

La Bruyere 633

Corneille reading to Louis XIV. 642

Racine 646

Boileau-Despreaux 650

La Fontaine, Boileau, Moliere, and Racine 657

Moliere 664

Death of Moliere 669

Lebrun 674

Le Poussin and Claude Lorrain 675

Lesueur 676

Mignard 677

Perrault 678

A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.

CHAPTER XXXV.——­HENRY IV., PROTESTANT KING. (1589-1593.)

On the 2d of August, 1589, in the morning, upon his arrival in his quarters at Meudon, Henry of Navarre was saluted by the Protestants King of France.  They were about five thousand in an army of forty thousand men.  When, at ten o’clock, he entered the camp of the Catholics at St. Cloud, three of their principal leaders, Marshal d’Aumont, and Sires d’Humieres and de Givry, immediately acknowledged him unconditionally, as they had done the day before at the death-bed of Henry iii., and they at once set to work to conciliate to him the noblesse of Champagne, Picardy, and Ile-de-France.  “Sir,” said Givry, “you are the king of the brave; you will be deserted by none but dastards.”  But the majority of the Catholic leaders received him with such expressions as, “Better die than endure a Huguenot king!” One of them, Francis d’O, formally declared to him that the time had come for him to choose between the insignificance of a King of Navarre and the grandeur of a King of France; if he pretended to the crown, he must first of all abjure.  Henry firmly rejected these threatening entreaties, and left their camp with an urgent recommendation, to them to think of it well before bringing dissension into the royal army and the royal party which were protecting their privileges, their property, and their lives against the League.  On returning to his quarters, he noticed the arrival of Marshal de Biron, who pressed him to lay hands without delay upon the crown of France, in order to guard it and save it.  But, in the evening of that day and on the morrow, at the numerous meetings of the lords to deliberate upon the situation, the ardent Catholics renewed their demand for the exclusion of Henry from the throne if he did not at once abjure, and for referring the election of a king to the states-general.  Biron