Our tale of the captivity of the king ends here, but the consequences of that captivity must be told. A league was immediately afterwards formed against Charles, named the Holy League, from the Pope being at its head. The nobles of Burgundy refused to be handed over to the imperial realm, and an assembly called by Francis absolved him from his oath to keep the treaty of Madrid. Francis, bewailing his lack of power to do what he had promised in regard to Burgundy, offered to pay the emperor two millions of crowns instead. In short, Charles had overreached himself through his stringency to a captive rival, and lost all through his eagerness to obtain too much. Ten years afterwards the relations between the two monarchs were in a measure reversed. A rebellion had broken out in Flanders which needed the immediate presence of Charles, and, for reasons satisfactory to himself, he wished to go through France. His counsellors at Madrid looked upon such a movement as fatally rash; but Charles persisted, feeling that he knew the character of Francis better than they. The French king was ready enough to grant the permission asked, and looked upon the occasion as an opportunity to show his rival how kings should deal with their royal neighbors. Charles was received with an ostentatious welcome, each town entertaining him with all the magnificence it could display. He was presented with the keys of the gates, the prisoners were set at liberty, and he was shown all the honor due to the sovereign of the country itself. The emperor, though impatient to continue his journey, remained six days in Paris, where all things possible were done to render his visit a pleasant one. Had Francis listened to the advice of some of his ministers, he would have seized and held prisoner the incautious monarch who had so long kept him in captivity. But the confidence of the emperor was not misplaced; no consideration could induce the high-minded French king to violate his plighted word, or make him believe that Charles would fail to carry out certain promises he had made. He forgot for the time how he had dealt with his own compacts, but Charles remembered, and was no sooner out of France than all his promises faded from his mind, and Francis learned that he was not the only king who could enter into engagements which he had no intention to fulfil. THE INVASION OF AFRICA.