The invitation of the Béarnese king was better responded to. Mornay joined this prince, who was then poor and weak, at his small court at Agen; and these two men, so different in character, habit, and conduct, contracted a friendship, which was on more than one occasion interrupted, but never entirely destroyed. Henry stood in need of Mornay, of his prudence, his devotion, and even of his severity; and Mornay, notwithstanding his reproaches, saw in his master a man who had been raised by Heaven to defend the cause of the Reformation. His functions at the court of Agen and Nérac were as multifarious as his genius was versatile. During the less important wars, which were continually springing up between Henry III. and the Béarnese king, he acted at different times as captain, engineer, camp-master, and chief financier of the army; and instead of gaining by these employments, he more frequently contributed to the cause. When in the tent, he would take his pen and draw up diplomatic notes, memorials, manifestoes, replies to the (Roman) Catholics, and remonstrances to the Reformed, with admirable promptitude. In council he prepared the speeches of the king of Navarre, and furnished him with suitable arguments to satisfy men of jealous or suspicious temperament. He visited the court of France in order to defend the interests of his co-religionists. Henry III. asked him one day, how a man of his science and capacity could be a Huguenot; “Have you never read,” he asked, “the Catholic doctors?” “I have not only read the Catholic doctors,” was Mornay’s reply, “but I have read them with earnestness; for I am flesh and blood, like another man, and was not born without ambition. I should have been very glad to have discovered what would have quieted my conscience, in order that I might have participated in the wealth and honours which you distribute, and from the enjoyment of which my religion excludes me. But everywhere I have found arguments to fortify my belief; and worldly considerations should always yield to those of conscience.” Noble words, and passing strange to have been spoken at the court of the Valois, and of Catherine de Medicis! After the death of Henry III. Mornay was, near Henry IV., as the organ of those whose faith was the most decided, and whose intentions were the purest of the Consistorial Reformed.