He desired in the end to marry her to the Duke de Bar, of the house of Lorraine. This affair, of so little intrinsic importance, occupied the attention of the royal council, the Holy See, and the synods for a long time. A disputation was held before the princess between a doctor of the Sorbonne and a professor of Sedan, which did not, however, result in Catherine’s forsaking her faith. The pope refused to give a dispensation for the marriage; the prelates, in their turn, also refused to move any further; whilst the king, whom these delays disgusted, conceived the idea of summoning his natural brother, the archbishop of Rouen, to his cabinet, a worldly priest, who consented to give the nuptial benediction. The marriage was not a happy one. The sister of Henry IV. had to suffer coldness and ill-treatment from the Duke de Bar, who allowed himself to be wholly led by the Jesuits. She died in 1604, and no Bourbon since that time has belonged to the Reformed communion. Some noblemen of high rank still endeavoured to draw the Huguenots into their individual quarrels, but they were not listened to. The Duke de Bouillon, among others, who had been compromised in the conspiracy of Marshal Biron, invited his co-religionists to come to his aid. “It is necessary,” said he, “that the ministers and the churches, altogether, without exception or distinction, should defend this very just and important cause.” Some gentlemen rose at his call, but the majority did not respond to it. The freedom, guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes, satisfied the Consistorialists, and the others could effect nothing without them. If some political assemblies continued to meet, it was only every third year. They sometimes consisted of seventy members, namely, thirty gentlemen, twenty delegates of the _Tiers-parti_, and twenty pastors. They displayed no spirit of faction, and commonly confined themselves to drawing up statements of grievances, and to naming two general deputies for the protection of the interests of the churches at court. The king, without absolutely interdicting these meetings, took umbrage at them, and, through Sully, expressed his sentiments to the assembly of Châtellerault. “If Henry IV.,” answered the delegates, “were immortal, we, content with his word in everything respecting ourselves, would instantly renounce the thought of the slightest precaution; we would abandon our places of security; we would consider every individual rule useless for the preservation of our society. But the dread of finding different sentiments in one of his successors” (was not their caution prophetic?) “compels us to preserve the measures, which have been taken for our safety.”