In the following year, 1583, there occurred another, but comparatively a trivial, illustration of the ambitious views of the Guises, and the vacillation and timidity of the king. Francis de Rosières, a native of Toul, born in 1534, was a man of prepossessing manners, and of considerable erudition and eloquence. He rose to be archdeacon of Toul, and through the patronage of cardinal de Guise, obtained several benefices, and the office of counsellor to the duke of Lorraine. To prove his gratitude to his benefactors, and probably at their instigation, he composed and published a voluminous work, on “the genealogy of the dukes of Lorraine and Bar.” Its evident purpose was to degrade the reigning family, and exalt that of the Guises. Not satisfied with tracing back in a direct line to Charlemagne the descent of the house of Lorraine, he carried it further through the starless night of ages, up to a son of Clodion, from whom Merovæus was pretended to have usurped the crown. The inference was easy, that the monarchs of the Capetian race were intruders, and that the Guises alone had a legitimate right to the throne. From thence to the assertion of the right was but a single step, on the propriety of which it was for prudence to decide, the question of justice being already settled. This doctrine was, in fact, openly taught in other works, which the Guises, however, affected to disavow, and to regard as fabrications of the protestants, for the purpose of throwing suspicion on their loyalty. In addition to his laboured genealogy of his patrons, Rosières had been guilty of various misrepresentations, and of a personal attack upon Henry; and he had supported his fabric of falsehood by documents which were manifestly spurious, and by altering others, so as to suit them to his purpose. The other libels Henry had repelled only by employing Pons de Thyard, a man of varied talents, to write an elaborate answer: against this he resolved to proceed in a different manner; he treated it as a state crime. He who had swallowed the camel of last year’s conspiracy, now strained at this gnat of a volume. And here again his infirmity of purpose betrayed him to the scorn of his enemies. Commencing vigorously, he despatched Brulart to Toul, to interrogate Rosières; after which the archdeacon was conveyed to Paris, and housed in the Bastile. Thus far, Henry seemed to have meditated a tragedy; but, in its further progress the drama dwindled down to a miserable farce. The plan which he adopted had the demerit of alike disclosing an inclination to mortify the Guises, and a dread of offending them. It was the latter feeling which prompted him to prohibit the parliament from intervening in the cause, because that body would probably pass a sentence derogatory to the house of Lorraine; it was the former feeling which induced him to persevere in seeking to gain the shadow of a triumph. He could not see that any thing short of complete victory was in reality a defeat.