Nicholas de Neufville, Lord of Villeroi, who was born in 1543, and whose grandfather had been secretary of state under Francis I., was, whilst Henry III. was still reigning, member of a small secret council at which all questions relating to Protestants were treated of. Though a strict Catholic, and convinced that the King of France ought to be openly in the ranks of the Catholics, and to govern with their support, he sometimes gave Henry III. some free-spoken and wise counsels. When he saw him spending his time with the brotherhoods of penitents whose head he had declared himself, “Sir,” said he, “debts and obligations are considered according to dates, and therefore old debts ought to be paid before new ones. You were King of France before you were head of the brotherhoods; your conscience binds you to render to the kingship that which you owe it rather than to the fraternity that which you have promised it. You can excuse yourself from one, but not from the other. You only wear the sackcloth when you please, but you have the crown always on your head.” When the wars of religion broke out, when the League took form and Henry de Guise had been assassinated at Blois, Villeroi, naturally a Leaguer and a moderate Leaguer, became the immediate adviser of the Duke of Mayenne. After Henry III.’s death, as soon as he heard that Henry IV. promised to have himself instructed in the Catholic religion, he announced his intention of recognizing him if he held to this engagement; and he held to his own, for he was during five years the intermediary between Henry IV. and Mayenne, incessantly laboring to reconcile them, and to prevent the estates of the League from giving the crown of France to a Spanish princess. Villeroi was a Leaguer of the patriotically French type. And so Henry IV., as soon as he was firm upon his throne, summoned him to his councils, and confided to him the direction of foreign affairs. The late Leaguer sat beside Sully, and exerted himself to give the prevalence, in Henry IV.’s external policy, to Catholic maxims and alliances, whilst Sully, remaining firmly Protestant in the service of his king turned Catholic, continued to be in foreign matters the champion of Protestant policy and alliances. There was thus seen, during the sixteenth century, in the French monarchy, a phenomenon which was to repeat itself during the eighteenth in the republic of the United States of America, when, in 1789, its president, Washington, summoned to his cabinet Hamilton and Jefferson together, one the stanchest of the aristocratic federalists and the other the warm defender of democratic principles and tendencies. Washington, in his lofty and calm impartiality, considered that, to govern the nascent republic, he had need of both; and he found a way, in fact, to make both of service to him. Henry IV. had perceived himself to be in an analogous position with France and Europe divided between Catholics and Protestants, whom he