A few months after the scene at Melun, the most eminent of French jurists, the celebrated Charles Du Moulin, published an unanswerable treatise, proving that the Council of Trent had none of the characteristics of a true oecumenical synod, and that its decrees were null and void.[330] And the Parliament of Paris, although it ordered the seizure of the book and imprisoned the author for some days, could not be induced to consent to incorporate in the legislation of the country the Tridentine decrees, so hostile in spirit to the French legislation.[331] Evidently parliament, although too timid to say so, believed, with Du Moulin, that the acceptance of the decrees in question "would be against God and against the benefit of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, against the ancient councils, against the majesty of the king and the rights of his crown, against his recent edicts and the edicts of preceding kings, against the liberty and immunity of the Gallican Church, the authority of the estates and courts of parliament of the kingdom, and the secular jurisdiction."[332] It was shortly before this time that the report gained currency that Charles the Ninth had received an embassy from Philip of Spain and the Duke of Savoy, inviting him, it was said, to a conference with all other "Christian" princes, to be held on the twenty-fifth of March (1564), to swear submission in common to the decrees of Trent and devise means for the repression of heresy. But neither Charles nor his mother, still very much under the influence of the tolerant chancellor, was disposed to enter upon the path of persecution marked out for them. The conference was therefore, we are told, gracefully, but firmly declined.[333] The story was but an idle rumor, the absurdity of which is clearly seen from this one fact among many, that Philip had not at this time himself accepted and published the Tridentine decrees;[334] while, from various documents that have come down to us, it appears that Catharine de' Medici had for some months[335] been projecting a trip that should enable her son to meet several of the neighboring princes, for the purpose of cultivating more friendly relations with them. From this desire, and from the wish, by displaying the young monarch to the inhabitants of the different provinces, to revive the loyalty of his subjects, seriously weakened during the late civil war, apparently arose the project of that well-known "progress" of Charles the Ninth through the greater part of France, a progress which consumed many successive months. [Sidenote: The "progress" of Charles IX.]