It is unhappily too certain (and the history of those dreadful times furnishes melancholy proofs of it) that the maxims which they reproached Guignard and the Jesuits with, respecting the murder of kings, were at that time those of all the other religious orders, and of almost all the ecclesiastics. Henry III. had been assassinated by a fanatic of the order of Jacobins; their prior Bourgoin had just been broke upon the wheel for that doctrine; a Carthusian, named Ouin, had attempted the life of Henry IV. This abominable doctrine was that of the chiefs of the League, among whom were reckoned priests and bishops; it was also, if we may venture to say it, that of a great part of the nation, whom fanaticism had rendered weak and furious. The crime of the society was then that of many others. But the rancour of the court of Rome against Henry IV. the particular profession which the Jesuits made of devotion to that ambitious court; lastly, the confidence which the king had shewn towards them, in permitting them to instruct youth; all these motives, strengthened by the just hatred which their ambition had excited, made them deemed with reason so much the more dangerous and more criminal. Never have the Jacobins been reproached with a Bourgoin and Clement, assassins of their fraternity, as the Jesuits have been reproached with their scholar Chatel, and Guignard their fellow: the reason is, that the Jacobins are little dreaded, and that the Jesuits were both feared and odious. In this their almost general disaster, two parliaments had spared them, those of Bourdeaux and Toulouse: moreover, in banishing them the rest of the kingdom, they had neither alienated nor confiscated their effects; the magistrates who had proscribed them, had committed that great mistake; those fathers, who had still a corner in France to take shelter in, made use of the little breath which remained to them, in preparing for their resurrection; they joined to their intrigues, within the kingdom, the support of several sovereigns, and especially of the court of Rome, which Henry IV. feared to displease; and in spite of the just remonstrances of the parliaments, they obtained their return a few years after they had been banished. Henry IV. did much more for them; whether it was that they had found means to render themselves agreeable to that prince, or that he hoped to find in them more facility in reconciling with his amours the new religion which he professed; or whether, lastly, which is most probable, that great and unfortunate king, having been so often assassinated, and being still in danger of it, feared and wanted to shew respect for these foxes who were accused of having tigers at their command, he gave them in France considerable establishments; among others the magnificent college of la Flêche, whither he was desirous that his heart should be carried after his death; lastly, as if to interest them more particularly