When the success of his partisans, on the day of the Barricades, had rendered the duke of Guise master of the capital, he went, with a train of followers, to the house of Harlay, for the purpose of prevailing on him to convoke the parliament, that the recent measures might obtain something like a sanction. The president was walking in the garden, and he did not deign to notice his visiter till the duke approached him; then, raising his voice, he said, “It is a lamentable thing when the servant drives out his master. As to all the rest, my soul is God’s, my heart is the king’s, and my body is in the hands of the wicked; let them do as they please with it.” Guise still pressing him to assemble the parliament, he sternly replied, “When the majesty of the monarch is violated, the magistrate has no longer any authority.” Hoping to intimidate him, some of the duke’s followers threatened him with death, but their threats were as unavailing as the request of Guise had been. “I have,” replied the undaunted magistrate, “neither head nor life that I value more than the love I owe to God, the service which I owe to the king, and the good which I owe to my country.” After an imprisonment of several months, Harlay obtained his liberty, at the price of ten thousand crowns. The moment that he was free he departed from Paris, to join Henry the fourth at Tours, and the monarch appointed him president of the parliament sitting in that city, and composed of Parisian members, who had succeeded in escaping from the clutches of the Leaguers. In this post, Harlay sustained his high reputation, by the vigour and eloquence with which he refuted the manifestos of Spain and the League, and the bulls of the Roman Pontiff. Peace at length came, and Henry rewarded his services by the estate of Beaumont, with the title of count. When the first president returned to Paris, all the members of the parliament went out to meet and congratulate him. As Harlay advanced in years, he did not bate one jot of the spirit which he had manifested at an earlier period. He still unflinchingly supported the rights of the kingdom, and the liberties of the Gallican church, and protested against whatever he deemed pernicious to the people or the monarch. The re-establishment of the Jesuits he strongly but vainly opposed. From one of his speeches to Henry the fourth, in 1604, we may judge with what an honest freedom he uttered his sentiments. The parliament having dissented from a measure which the Council had resolved upon, its dissent was construed into disobedience. “If to serve well be disobedience,” replied the venerable magistrate, “the parliament is in the habit of committing that fault; and, when a conflict arises between the king’s absolute power and the good of his service, it prefers the one to the other, not from disobedience, but from a desire to do its duty, and to keep its conscience clear.”