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King's councils, in which dominance he was maintained by the "glory" of his brother, the Duke of Guise, and the favour of the royal mistress, Diana of Poitiers. This unscrupulous politician could not help esteeming L'Hôpital, in whom he could perceive the good man's moral strength that is not to be cowed by intimidation or corrupted by bribes. He helped to raise a rising man, and almost appeared as his protector. L'Hôpital had need of this support, says M. Villemain, to guard him against all the enmities excited from the first by his inflexible rectitude. For a long time past the finances of the kingdom had been the prey of those who farmed them and of the Court, each party struggling for the largest share. The public revenue reached the sum of thirty-eight millions; but barely half this amount went into the State coffers, and a thousand prodigalities drained what did go in." To have such a supervisor as L'Hôpital set over the exchequer, was intolerable to those who lived by abusing it. Hence a noisy band of malcontents and malignants, who detested the new minister, and were of one mind to put him down if the chance offered. Then again he made more enemies by the opposition he offered to the persecuting party. Together with some of his friends in the ParliamentArmand du Ferrier, for example, and Paul de Foix, and Christophe de Thou, and Louis du Faur-he petitioned the King to "suspend the proscriptions and executions" of Protestant reformers, "until the newlyassembled council should decide on the religious controversy." Henry treated the petition as rebellious, and had some of the petitioners arrested; the boldest of them, Anne du Bourg, being eventually put to death. Not many days, however, after the arrest-which "odious violation of the privileges of the Parliament filled the wisest minds with consternation" the King was slain in single combat, of the deadly sportive sort, by the hand of Montgomery. The Guises now had it all their own way, or nearly so. They induced the Chancellor Olivier, now enfeebled by age, to sign the ordinance which constituted Duke Francis lieutenantgeneral of France. With sorrow and sighing the aged minister wrote his name, nor ever, it seems, from that moment, had a quiet hour. Remorse overtook him in the very act, and may be said to have brought down his white hairs with sorrow to the grave. We are told that when visited, in his last illness, by the Cardinal of Lorraine, he exclaimed, "Ah! cardinal, par toi, nous voilà tous damnés." My brother," remonstrated his sleek and smooth-tongued Eminence, " mon frère, resist the evil spirit." "Well said! well met!" exclaimed the other, "with a horrible laugh;" and so, having said his say, and laughed his laugh, il tourna le dos, et mourut.*

66

But

L'Hôpital was appointed his successor the Queen-mother, Catherine, being desirous to have as Chancellor some man of assured probity, on whose loyalty to the crown she might implicitly rely, and who would not be a tool in the hands of any noble-family compact. The Cardinal was not discomposed by this appointment; he knew his man, he thought, and could reckon on his deference, he hoped. Both the Guise brothers consented to the Medicean selection, and made it appear they desired it of themselves; but Catherine took some pains to assure the Chancellor that to her alone he owed his elevation.† It was early in the year 1560 that

* Michelet, Histoire de France au XVIme Siècle, t. ix. ch. xi.

† Villemain.

he took office. The signs of the times could be read by all, for the sky was red and lowering; the storm, indeed, had already fitfully broken out; but none could tell what would be the end thereof.

Chancellor and Cardinal soon came into collision. The establishment of the Inquisition in France was a pet project with his Eminence, and met with strenuous resistance from L'Hôpital, who finding it necessary to legislate on the matter, proposed to give the bishops cognisance of heresy within their respective dioceses. Hence his "Romorantin" edict, which he sent to the Parliament to be registered, reminding that body, at the same time, that opinions resist violence and constraint, but may be shaken in their strongholds by exhortations and reasoning. He next essayed to revive the States-General, which had not been convoked for fourscore years. The Guises "shuddered" at the very notion, and would hear of nothing more, at the most, than a réunion of the grandees of the realm, who were assembled, accordingly, at Fontainebleau.

This assembly-presided over by Francis II., by whose side sat his radiant young queen, Mary Stuart-was attended by men who were soon to be engaged against each other in civil war. Coligny had his place there with the Guises and the Constable Montmorency; Montluc, Bishop of Valence, was there, "so favourable to the Reformers, whose most ruthless enemy his brother was ;" and the Archbishop of Vienne, whose religious tolerance was construed into the guilt of apostasy. L'Hôpital supported in effect the endeavours of the liberal party, and urged the king to confide in the love of his people, and convoke the States-General. He obtained leave to publish an edict for their convocation on the 10th of December, at Orleans, and meanwhile suspending all prosecutions: "for the crime of heresy." The Paris Parliament protested bitterly against this unwonted tolerance. The Reformers were all astir; their tactics seemed to justify fresh measures of repression; the Prince of Condé and the King of Navarre were laid hands on; and the Duke of Guise urged on the queen-mother their destruction. Catherine hesitated and vacillated, amid divers apprehensions: she dreaded the reforming princes, for them she had persecuted; she dreaded the Guises, for she knew their power; the Catholic party suspected, and the Protestant despised her.

Tormented by these uncertainties, though untroubled by remorse, she burst into tears in the midst of her maids of honour.* At length she resolved to appeal for counsel and aid in this emergency to the Chancellor, to whom she opened her grief, and her dismay at the present aspect of affairs, Francis dying, and the Lorraine princes growing stronger and bolder every day. L'Hôpital sought to interest her pride and ambition in the liberal cause and against these doughty brothers; he pointed out the great things she might do as Regent-how she ought to reign for her second son, Charles, still a child, without dependence on aspiring nobles. Catherine, in her alarm, acceded to all the Chancellor's sage counsels, and came to an understanding with the King of Navarre that same night, while Francis II. was expiring in another room. But she could not all at once throw off the dangerous support of the Guises. L'Hôpital wanted to see her "reign for herself and France, with the assistance of the States-General. His impartiality was that of justice, which would

* Villemain,

depend on no party, no ambition; the impartiality of Médicis was that of cunning, which would at once caress and dupe everybody." She tried to put off the assembly of the States, on the plea of the king's death. But, The King never dies, her Chancellor reminded her; and he had the gratification of actually opening the session with a characteristic speech, in which he combated the scruples of those who did not "think it useful and profitable to kings thus to consult their subjects,"-and then exposed the evils of the situation, the perils of sectarian spirit, and the need of dealing with it by wisdom and moral reform rather than pains and penalties of "assailing them with the arms of charity, with prayers, persuasions, the word of God, which are meet for such conflicts." And then he added: "Let us get rid of those diabolical words-Lutheran, Huguenot, Papist-names of party and sedition; nor let us change for them the title of Christians."

It is remarked by Mr. Buckle, in reference to this period, that while the minds of men were heated, as then they were, by religious strife, it would have been idle to expect any of those maxims of charity to which theological faction is always a stranger. While Protestants were murdering Catholics, and Catholics murdering Protestants, it was hardly likely, he says, that either sect should feel tolerance for the opinions of its enemy. "During the sixteenth century, treaties were occasionally made between the two parties; but they were only made to be immediately broken; and, with the single exception of L'Hôpital, the bare idea of toleration does not seem to have entered the head of any statesman of the age. It was recommended by him; but neither his splendid abilities, nor his unblemished integrity, could make head against the prevailing preju dices, and he eventually retired into private life without effecting any of his noble schemes."* His reiterated appeals to unrighteous authority, when it cries Havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war, were in the tone of Abner's to Joab: "Shall the sword devour for ever? knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end? how long shall it be, then, ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren ?"+ But there was this difference, that the son of Ner's pleading prevailed.

M. Capefigue, in his History of the Reformation and of the League, is pleased to treat the Chancellor de l'Hôpital with contempt, as a man without sense or courage, who was continually attempting some wretched compromise between two adverse parties that sought each other's destruction. By various modern writers, at home and abroad, a not dissimilar character is given of one who, as judged by traditional reverence, might almost appropriate Spenser's lines,

-than which none more upright,

Ne more sincere in word and deed profest;
Most voide of guile, most free from foule despight,
Doing himself and teaching others to do right.

There are repeated passages in a recent English biography of Montaigne, which uniformly treat L'Hôpital with the reverse of veneration. Thus, describing the progress of Charles IX. to the south of France, in 1565,

* Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, I. 467-8. † 2 Samuel, II. 26. See Edin. Rev., LXIII. 3. § The Faerie Queene, bk. iv. c. xi. st. 18.

during which progress sanguinary designs were concealed under festivals and rejoicings, the biographer says: "Bordeaux was visited, and the Chancelier de l'Hospital, who had not yet discovered that he was the dupe of the Guises, and was used by them and the queen-mother to give a semblance of rectitude to the Court, was delighted at the opportunity of delivering a moral discourse to the licentious and fanatical Parliament.' "The effect of the chancellor's admonishing speech, or rather violent scolding, was not very effective" [sic], &c.t Again: "The toleration of L'Hospital was the toleration of a lawyer. He did not approve of proceeding against heretics by massacre or any irregular means; and, being a prudent and cold man, took every opportunity of proposing some half measure, under cover of which the Huguenots could have lived safely. But although he was one of the conspirators in the celebrated affair of Amboise, he long afterwards consented to serve as the blind of the Guises and Catherine de Medici." And once more: "The Chancelier l'Hospital, after having tried in vain to struggle against the fanaticism, real or assumed, of power, had now retired to his countryhouse at Vignay, where he occupied himself in writing Latin poetry. This celebrated man had all the stuff of a reformer, except the vital energy." M. Michelet's tone may probably have influenced if not inspired this portraiture: "bon homme," he styles the Chancellor, "qui, pour faire quelque bien de détail, couvrit de sa vertu l'intrigue qui noya la France de sang."|| Elsewhere the same dashing historian writes to this effect of L'Hôpital: "Shall I say it? I know no sadder sight than that of this worthy man dragging about his white beard behind Catherine de Medicis. There is no explaining how he could abide it, or what sort of figure he could have made amid that equivocal court, among women and intrigues. Was he not aware that his mere presence, in such a scene, was a lie ?" Michelet avers, nevertheless, that "the law itself did not long survive L'Hôpital, who died of grief."** And there is something of mild pity and affectionate regret in his description of the minister's looks, as seen in the Louvre picture-la face désolée et usée du pauvre chancelier l'Hôpital: "Gentle, good, honest, with a certain ideality in the eyes, a poor precursor of equity to come: Quæsivit cœlo lucem, ingemuitque repertâ."++

M. Sainte-Beuve somewhere applauds what he calls "cette religion politique" of the L'Hôpitals and Pithous, which it may weary us in the long run to find always just, like Aristides, but which remains none the less just, for all that. Charles Labitte means the same thing, when he extols "cette sage honnêteté," or political moderation, which he traces back to Erasmus, but to Erasmus modified by L'Hôpital. "The illustrious Chancellor was in fact, from conscience and by superiority, what the author of the Colloquies had been by dint of circumspection and intellectual finesse. The good sense of Erasmus, the probity of L'Hôpital, here have we the double programme of those politicians whom, in the first instance, everybody made game of,-of that tiers-parti, 'in which,' says D'Aubigné

*Montaigne the Essayist. By Bayle St. John. I. 252-3.

+ Ibid. 255.

Ibid. 325.

§ Ibid. 278.

ft Notes des Guerres de Religion, p. 472.

† Ibid. 254.

Hist. de France, t. ix. p. 298. ** La Ligue (Hist., t. x.), p. 7.

By the way, we find the original of this sentence, word for word, in M. Villemain's Vie de L'Hôpital, p. 430. Ed. 1852.

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[Agrippa], the reformers had as little belief as they had in the third place, to wit purgatory.' But," continues M. Labitte, “give them time, let passions die out, let l'esprit français, with its straightforward logic, recover itself amid this pell-mell, and then this party will increase, and among the upright magistrates who support it we shall find the names of Tronson, Edouard Molé, De Thou, Pasquier, Pithou, Loisel, Montholon, L'Estoile, Harlay, Séguier, Du Vair, Nicolaï; we shall guess the author of the Satyre Ménippée, Pierre le Roy, Passerat, Gillot, Rapin, &c., honest representatives of the Parisian bourgeoisie; and moderate men of the League party even, like Villeroy and Jeannin, will range themselves one day beneath this banner, destined to become that of Henry IV. and of Sully."*

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The President Hénault's eulogy of L'Hôpital has been not only admired as eloquent but generally accepted as true. "This great man," he says, "amid civil troubles, made the laws speak, speechless as they were apt to be in these times of storm and tempest; it never occurred to him to doubt their power; he honoured reason and justice in believing them to be stronger than arms. Hence these laws, the noble simplicity of which brings them into comparison with the laws of Rome-these laws, from which he struck out, according to Seneca's direction, every preamble, unworthy of the majesty that should accompany them. Hence these edicts, which, by their wise provision, embrace the future with the present, and have since become a fertile repertory for decision of cases which they did not foresee; hence those ordinances, whose combined strength and wisdom make us forget the weakness of the reign in which they were passed; the immortal works of a magistrate, above all praise, who felt the extent of the duties he fulfilled, and the power of the high office he discharged; who knew how to sacrifice it when he perceived the general wish to restrain its functions, and by whom all those have been judged who, without his courage or his knowledge, have dared to sit at his tribunal."+ Voltaire's allusions to him in the History of the Parliament of Paris correspond in tendency with ancient Hénault's more laboured éloge.

It has been often observed by historians of our own that a bad reignCharles the Second's, for example-may yet have been distinguished for good measures. So M. Villemain calls it a remarkable, and at first sight a surprising, fact, that many of the wise ordinances of the old French monarchy date from a fatal reign in French history; L'Hôpital being their author. The Chancellor busied himself at the same time about the reform of justice, security for trade, sumptuary laws, and cognate matters. He practised at home the republican simplicity, of Cato Censor's type, that no persuasion, no example of his, no sumptuary laws of his constructing or enforcing, could make the rule of life in that corrupt, luxurious, disjointed age. Brantôme tells us of his dining with the Chancellor one day, when the fare consisted of bouilli, and nothing else. Dainty gourmet as he was, and accustomed at far other tables to fare sumptuously every day, and probably as disdainful of bouilli as Beau Brummell of beans and bacon, Brantôme nevertheless kept his seat like a man, did not faint, or grow queasy in his chair; nay, forgot the boiled abomination in the charm of his host's table-talk, for L'Hôpital entertained him with a

*Ch. Labitte: De la Démocratie chez les Prédicateurs de la Ligue, p. 105. † Hénault, Abrégé Chronol. de l'Hist. de France.

July-VOL. CXIX. NO. CCCCLXXV.

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