But they very soon parted company with the less nimble-witted Capuchins and the cloistered Carthusians, and the next page of their story in France is not without humour. Henry's politic scrutiny of the Catholic creed had, of course, led to his "conversion," but the Pope had a sufficient decency of feeling to distrust so opportune and profitable a change of creed, and he coldly rebuffed the genial monarch. When Henry sent the Duke de Nevers to Rome to plead his cause with the Pope, Clement ordered the Jesuit Possevin to intercept him in Italy and say that the Pope refused to see him. We remember Possevin as the ingenious and accommodating Legate to the Swedes, and we shall see other proofs of his diplomatic ability. With an audacity which must almost be without parallel in the chronicle of papal diplomacy he did the exact opposite of what the Pope had commanded; he encouraged de Nevers to see the Pope, and then fled before the stormy anger of Clement and the Spaniards. It was the first service rendered to Henry by a Jesuit, and was quickly followed by other useful services. They had perceived the strength of Henry and reversed their policy. The Jesuit-Cardinal Toledo, although a Spaniard, intervened in Henry's favour, and the head of the Jesuit house at Paris, Commolet--the preacher who had urged the assassination of Henry--came to Rome to say that he and his colleagues were now convinced of the King's sincerity and begged the Pope to yield. This change of front was opportune. Although the hostility of the university to the Jesuits had been enfeebled by the penetration of Jesuit pupils into the theological faculty, it still, as a body, hated the Society, and its leaders felt that they might take some advantage of the stubborn resistance to Henry. In April the university begged the Parlement to expel the Jesuits from the kingdom. Another great debate, in which the anti-Jesuit lawyers of Paris battered the Society and flung at it all the charges that could be found in Europe, entertained the sympathetic citizens. Arnauld, who was now in the field, estimated the total yearly income of the Jesuits at more than two million _livres_; he said that in France alone they had, in a few years, secured an income of two hundred thousand _livres_ a year, and he eloquently denounced their interference in politics. The Jesuits made the remarkable defence that they had only mingled in the League in order to moderate its ardour, that they had no unpatriotic attachment to Spain, and that they would scrupulously avoid politics for the future. Henry permitted them to remain. A short time before (August 1593) Barrière had attempted to assassinate him, and, as Barrière had had a Jesuit confessor, it was suggested that the Jesuits had inspired him. Henry said that, on the contrary, it was the Jesuits who had warned him of the plot. A fuller knowledge of this warning would be extremely interesting, but we have no evidence of it beyond Henry's