These were those extravagant demands which began to open the eyes of many good Catholics, who had suffered themselves to be innocently seduced by the appearances of true zeal, which being little illuminated, was not “according to knowledge,” as the apostle speaks. For they now more clearly saw into some of those articles; that the League to engage the Pope and the king of Spain in their interests, would be content to abandon those privileges and liberties, which our ancestors have always maintained with so much vigour and resolution; and to subject to the yoke of a Spanish inquisition, the French, who have never been able to undergo it. And in others of them, that they designed to bereave the king of all the solid and essential parts of royalty, to leave him only the shadow and appearance of it, and afterwards to dispose even of his person, as the heads of their party should think fit. And accordingly when the request was presented to the king on the part of the associated princes, and the cardinal of Bourbon, whose simplicity and whose name they abused, and made it a cloak to their ambition, he conceived an extreme indignation against it, which immediately appeared in his eyes and countenance. Yet he thought it necessary at that time to dissemble, not finding himself then in a condition of returning such an answer to it, as was becoming a king justly provoked against his subjects, who stood on terms with him like lords and masters. For which reason, and withal to gain farther time, he contented himself to say, that he would examine those articles in his council, in order to his answer; which should be in such sort, that all good Catholics should have reason to be satisfied. But in the mean time, the Duke of Guise, who took not fair words for payment, well understanding the king’s design, and resolving not to give the Duke of Espernon the leisure to conjure down that tempest which was raised against him, and to infuse into his master those vigorous resolutions which were necessary for him to take, pressed the king continually to give a precise answer to every particular in those articles. For he doubted not, that, in case it proved favourable, he should ingross all power in himself; and if it were otherwise, that it would be thought the king resolved to maintain the Huguenots, and that by consequence the Catholics would enter into a war against him.