These were the most important events of the second half of the reign of Henry IV.; and when we recollect the horrible scenes that had preceded them, we are happy that we have only to register theological strifes. If they still stirred up burning passions, human blood no longer flowed. Divine worship was celebrated almost everywhere without obstacle in the seven hundred and sixty churches that remained to the French Reformation; and when serious grievances were laid before the council, they were redressed. The faithful of Paris had been compelled to open their church in the little village of Ablon, five leagues from the town. The courtiers complained that they could not on the same day discharge their duty to God and the king. The poor also complained of the distance. Some of the children carried to the meetings, according to the discipline, for baptism, had died on the way. The king was touched with these difficulties, and in 1606 permitted the Reformers to exercise their worship at Charenton; which lasted until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Nevertheless, a horrible catastrophe was preparing in the dark. The Jesuits, expelled from the kingdom after the crime of Jean Châtel, had returned, because Henry IV., having to choose between two dangers, preferred having them near him than against him. And when it was urged upon him how wrong it was to recall these perfidious and sanguinary monks; “Ventre-Saint-Gris,” said he, “will you answer for my person.” He tried to gain them by confidence and good services. Father Cotton was even named confessor of the king, and preceptor of the dauphin. But nothing disarmed them, any more than it did the dregs of the people, who, mindful of the sermons of the League, always esteemed the Béarnese king as an excommunicated heretic. On the 14th of May, 1610, Ravaillac buried his knife in the bosom of Henry IV. This wretch confessed in his interrogatories that he had given way to the temptation to kill him, because in warring against the pope, the king made war against God, “_inasmuch as the pope is God_!” Thus a sacrilegious doctrine had begotten the crime of regicide. Henry IV. has occupied a great place in the memory and love of the French. He redeemed his weaknesses by eminent qualities, and his very faults by the splendid services which he rendered to his people. It is from his reign, as has been remarked, that the end of the Middle Ages really dates; and the Reformers have ever been grateful to a prince, who was the first that sincerely granted them the free exercise of their religion. II.