At a later period, Henry IV. explained the exclusion of the ministers by the following position. His mind was made up beforehand, he said. Why, then, expose the advocates of the Reformation to a certain defeat? Had they attended the conference, the bishops would have boasted of having vanquished them; in not attending, the ministers preserved the right of saying that they had not been heard. It is thus that sometimes the most serious matters are dealt with in this world. On the 23rd July, the archbishop of Bourges delivered a discourse before the king, which lasted from six until eleven o’clock in the morning. The Béarnese only interrupted it from time to time, in order to ask for some explanation; or, if he raised an objection, he took care to add that he submitted himself entirely to the authority of the (Roman) Catholic church—conduct more worthy of a mocking philosopher than of a king. It was a ceremony arranged beforehand. Henry IV. had written to Gabrielle d’Estrées: “I commence this morning to speak to the bishops. It will be to-morrow that I shall make the perilous leap.” An act of abjuration had been prepared, in which the king rejected, one after the other, all the doctrines of the Reformed faith. But he would not sign it, and they [the clergy] were contented with a vague adhesion in six lines to the articles of the Roman church. Nevertheless, by a cheat, very much resembling an act of forgery, and which paints the manners of the age, Loménie counterfeited the king’s signature on the first of the two formularies which it became necessary to send to the pope. On Sunday, the 25th July, 1593, at eight o’clock in the morning, the king presented himself at the great gate of the church of Saint Denis, accompanied by the princes and the officers of the crown. At the entrance were the prelates, who awaited his arrival with the cross, the book of the Evangelists, and holy water. “Who are you?” said the archbishop of Bourges. “I am the king.” “What do you demand?” “I demand to be received within the pale of the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman church.” “Do you desire it _sincerely_?” “Yes, I wish it and desire it.” Then kneeling, he pronounced the formulary agreed upon, and the archbishop gave him absolution, and the benediction. The priests sang a grand mass, and at the termination of the ceremony, Cardinal de Bourbon carried to the king the book of the Evangelists to kiss. This is what has been termed the conversion of Henry IV.—a matter of policy, through the influence of women, a lie of the priests, and a falsehood from beginning to end! XX.