This sudden fall from their proud position was the price of political action, but Henry was not in a position, and indeed not of a character, to sustain the sentence, and the Jesuits at once began to struggle for recall. Within ten years the hated pyramid was demolished, and the Jesuits had regained their prestige. They had never entirely quitted France. Some put off their cassocks and became, in appearance, "lay" teachers of the young; some were sheltered by the local Parlements. The formal reconciliation of Henry with the Papacy followed, and the Pope urged him to recall the Jesuits. He pleaded again when he had negotiated for Henry a peace with Philip of Spain, but the Parlement stoutly maintained its decree, and Henry advised them to wait. Then the Pope obliged Henry by annulling his marriage, and the watchful Acquaviva stood again in the shadow of the papal throne. Father Maggio was sent, in the suite of the Archbishop of Arles, to win the King. They knew Henry, and shrewdly chose an envoy who could adopt the broad wit which Henry loved as easily as Possevin or Parsons could wear a sword, or Ricci a pigtail. "Sire," said Maggio to the bluff King, when the affair dragged, "you are slower than women, for they bear their fruit only nine months." "Quite true, Father Maggio," said Henry, "but kings are not delivered as easily as women." It was the way to win Henry IV., and he was won, but public feeling was still too hostile to the Jesuits. In 1603 their opportunity came. The Huguenots had been so imprudent as to abuse the Pope, and the Jesuits must be restored for the Pope's consolation; also, there was a new queen, Marie de Medici, and an amiable Father Coton winning influence over her. And at the beginning of 1604 the Parlement sullenly registered the decree for the readmission of the Jesuits, and the fathers all swore a sonorous oath of loyalty to the King "without mental reservation," as the decree ran; no other body of men ever needed to be insulted with such a clause. The remaining years, down to the assassination of Henry in 1610, mark the rapid recovery of the Society. Father Coton was royal preacher and confessor, and obtained such influence that, when the King was deaf to their prayers or protests, men said that Henry "had cotton in his ears"; and the fusillade of pamphlets and counter-pamphlets--witty, fierce, and gross on both sides--again enlivened Paris. They raised more houses than they had ever had before, and got admission into Protestant Béarn and the Canadian mission. There was hardly a more generous benefactor to the Society in Europe than Henry, though we may take the word of Richelieu that he distrusted them, as a body, and acted from policy. At length Henry betrayed the real shallowness of their influence on him, and began to prepare for war with Spain; and on 14th May 1610 he fell by the hand of a Catholic fanatic.