[166] Crét. vol. ii. p. 388.
[167] Ibid. p. 392.
[168] This insurrection was called “the days of the barricades.”
[169] Crét. vol. ii, p. 414.
[170] This Council was so called because it was composed of sixteen members, representing the sixteen quarters of Paris; and it possessed the supreme authority de facto. In this council the Jesuits had the greatest influence, and one of them was a member of it.
[171] Crét. vol. ii. p. 404.
[172] It is asserted in a memoir of the Seigneur de Schomberg, that after the assassination of Guise, Sixtus, through his legate, suggested to Henry III. to name one of the Pope’s nephews as his successor to the throne of France. But we have too good an opinion of Sixtus’ sagacity to believe him guilty of such an extravagant project.
[173] Ranke’s Hist. of the Popes, vol. ii. p. 25.
[174] How Elizabeth deplored this unprincipled act! “Ah, what grief,” she wrote to him after his apostasy, “and what regrets and what groans I have felt in my soul at the sound of such tidings as Morlaut has related! My God! is it possible that any human respect should efface the terror which Divine fear threateneth! Can we ever, by arguments of reason, expect a good consequence of actions so iniquitous? He who has supported and preserved you in mercy, can you imagine that He will permit you to advance unaided from on high to the greatest predicament? But it is dangerous to do evil in the hope that good will follow from it.—Your very faithful sister, Sire, after the old fashion—I have nothing to do with the new one—Elizabeth.”[175]
[175] Bibl. du Roi MSS. de Colbert, apud Capefique, N. 251.