His first embarrassments arose from the faction of Catholics to the backbone. After his abjuration just as much as at his accession, the League continued to exist and to act against him. The legate, Gaetani, maintained that the bishops of France had no right, without the pope’s approval, to give an excommunicated prince absolution; he opposed the three months’ truce concluded by Mayenne, and threatened to take his departure for Rome. Mayenne, to appease him and detain him, renewed the alliance between the League and Spain, prevailed upon the princes and marshals to renew also the oath of union, caused the states-general of the League to vote the adoption of the Council of Trent, and, on proroguing them, August 8, 1593, received from them a promise to return at the expiration of the truce. For the members of that assembly it was not a burdensome engagement; independently of the compensation they had from their provinces, which was ten livres (thirty-six francs, sixty centimes) a day during each session, they received from the King of Spain a regular retainer, which raised it, for the five months from June to October, to seventy-two thousand one hundred and forty-four francs, which they divided between themselves. “It was presumed,” said Jehan l’Huillier, provost of tradesmen, to one of his colleagues who was pressing him to claim this payment from the ambassador of Spain, “that the money came from M. de Mayenne, not from foreigners; “but honest people, such as Du Vair and Thielement, did not content themselves with this presumption, and sent to the Hotel-Dieu, for maintenance of the poor, the share which was remitted to them. [Poirson, _Histoire du Regne de Henry IV.,_ t. i. p. 463. Picot, _Histoire des Etats generaux,_ t. iii. p. 249.]