“For two years,” he continues, “nothing was said of me, until the Protestants again made inconvenient demands, and I was selected by the king with full powers to hear their complaints.” These were the disputes which were terminated in 1598, by the publication of the celebrated Edict of Nantes. De Thou was very reluctant to undertake this office, foreseeing that it would involve him in great odium. Nor was he mistaken in this respect. He was a zealous advocate of toleration: and his liberality of spirit, manifested upon this and on other occasions, but most of all in the unsparing impartiality of his History, placed him, though a Catholic, in bad odour at the court of Rome, by whose influence with the Queen Regent, after the death of Henry IV., he was frustrated in the chief object of his ambition, that of succeeding to the office of First President of the Parliament of Paris, which became vacant in 1611. To that of Président à Mortier he had succeeded in 1595, by his uncle’s death. He was deeply mortified at this slight, and meditated the resignation of all his offices: and he has strongly expressed his sense of the weight of his claims, and of the injury done to him by thus overlooking them, in the letter to the President Jeannin, part of which we have just quoted. The first suggestion of pique, however, was overruled by his friends. He was appointed one of the directors-general of finance, after the death of Henry IV., and consequent resignation of Sully, in 1610, and was consulted by the Regent in almost all matters of delicacy and importance. His leisure moments during these last years were devoted to his History, which he did not live to bring down to its intended point of conclusion, the death of Henry IV. He died May 7, 1617, leaving three sons and three daughters by a second marriage: his first wife, childless, died in 1601. The eldest of these, François Auguste de Thou, is known in history by having suffered death with Cinq-Mars, in the reign of Louis XIII., for an alleged conspiracy against the state, the real object of which was the overthrow of Cardinal Richelieu. In 1593 De Thou was appointed principal librarian to Henry IV.; and by his advice the valuable library of Catherine de’ Medici was purchased, and the foundation was laid of that splendour and importance which the Bibliothèque du Roi has since attained. He had himself brought together a very excellent library, a large part of which has since passed into the royal collection. He was a steady friend and favourer of learning and learned men; a zealous, faithful, and disinterested subject; an able statesman; an upright and enlightened magistrate: and his life, both in public and private, displayed the same undeviating integrity and love of truth, which especially distinguish him as an historian.