the moat, whence by means of ropes and ladders they entered the fortress. The last of them were just getting in when day broke, and the Count of Nassau discovered the trick that had been played him, and detached a body of cavalry to pursue Guise, then retreating with his drums and trumpets, and whose steady array discouraged attack. A few days later the Imperialists raised the siege, and Paris, which had been in consternation at the danger of Peronne, its last bulwark against the advancing foe, knew no bounds in its gratitude to the man to whom it thus, for the second time, was indebted for its salvation. Guise's great services in this and the following campaign rendered Francis I. indulgent to his still-recurring pretensions; to the arrogance which led him frequently to refuse obeying orders that did not emanate directly from the King, and to assume a sort of independence and irresponsibility in the exercise of his government. Looking back, through the clarifying medium of history, upon the character and conduct of Claude of Lorraine, we are disinclined to think that Francis had ever serious cause for mistrusting the loyalty of his powerful subject; whose encroachments, however, it cannot be denied, were sufficient grounds for jealousy and uneasiness. And on more than one occasion we find the royal anger--perhaps complete disgrace--averted from him only by the interest of his brother the Cardinal, to whom Francis could refuse nothing. As a diplomatist and patron of the arts, Cardinal John of Lorraine occupies almost as elevated a pedestal in the gallery of distinguished Frenchmen of the sixteenth century, as does his brother Claude in his more active capacity of general of armies and administrator of provinces. His courtly qualities, and a congeniality of tastes--some of which, although they might be held excusable in a king, were scarcely to be palliated in a prelate, even in that age of lax morality--endeared him to Francis, who associated with him on a footing of great familiarity. His generosity and charity were on such a scale as at times to resemble prodigality and ostentation; his love of pleasure and addiction to gallantry were in like manner excessive. "He was," says M. de Bouillé, "a very lettered prince, a splendid patron of learned men, whom he treated as friends, and in whose labours he associated himself. A writer named Bertrand de Vaux, having presented and read to him a critical work, containing low personality, awaited, notwithstanding its base character, the recompense which the Cardinal always granted to those authors with whose productions he was satisfied. The prelate accordingly handed him a golden etui. 'Take this, friend Bertrand,' he said; 'it is to pay the fatigue and salary of the reader. The writer must seek payment from some more malignant man than myself.'" The celebrated Erasmus, Clement Marot the poet, and Rabelais the satirist, all benefited by the patronage