Some timid Calvinists endeavoured to find refuge by the use of equivocal terms, such as: “Since it pleases the king,” &c., and in that manner they subscribed, not an abjuration, but an act of obedience to the royal will. The bishops perceived this, and were most rigorous with those whom they admitted. One of them, the Bishop d’Angers, gave directions that none of the Huguenots should be received until they had undergone a lengthened course of instruction, and a strict examination on points of faith. Thus the prince enjoined their conversion in fifteen days, and the bishops repulsed those, who were not minutely versed in all the details of the Romish doctrines. Thus there was nothing but contradictions. Henry III. did not, however, wish to crush the Calvinist party entirely; he feared lest too much power should be given to the League, and to the duke of Guise. His most ardent desire was to ruin each of the two parties by means of the other, and he was frequently heard to mutter: “I will be revenged upon my enemies by my enemies.” Seeing that the king was deficient in energy in the prosecution of the heretics, Pope Sixtus V. lost patience, and fulminated a bull of excommunication against the Bourbons, which twenty-five cardinals signed with him. It stated that Henry of Bourbon, formerly king of Navarre, and Henry, also of Bourbon, Prince de Condé, being heretics, having relapsed into heresy, and not having repented, were deprived of all their principalities, they and their heirs for ever. If any one again dared to obey “this bastard and detestable race of Bourbons,” and to recognise as his sovereign this former king of the pretended kingdom of Navarre, he should incur the same excommunication. Never, even in the most violent invectives against “the _ci-devant_ king, Louis Capet,” did the Convention of 1793 so completely fail in decency and modesty. The Béarnese king replied to this insolent bull, by causing a protest to be posted up, on the 6th of November, 1585, in all the public resorts of Rome, commencing thus: “Henry, by the grace of God, king of Navarre, sovereign prince of Béarn, first peer and prince of France, protests against the declaration and excommunication of Sixtus V., calling himself pope of Rome, declares that it is false, and appeals against the same as slanderous to the court of the Peers of France. And in that, which touches the crime of heresy, of which he is falsely accused by the declaration, he says and maintains that Sixtus, calling himself pope in that behalf, hath falsely and maliciously lied, and that he is himself a heretic, as shall be made manifest in full council freely and lawfully assembled.” It is said that Sixtus, astonished by so bold an act, began from that time properly to appreciate the character of his adversary. XVII.