This touched so sensibly the Leaguers of that assembly, and principally their head, who looked on this speech as particularly addressed to himself, that they proceeded even to threatening, that they would break off the estates by their departure, if the king, who had commanded his speech to be printed, would not give order to suppress it, or at least correct that passage. There are some who affirm, that, after a rough dispute concerning it, the king permitted at last that something should be altered, and the harshness of his expressions a little mollified; but there are others, and even of their number, who heard it spoken, who assure us, that it came out in public in the same terms it was pronounced. However it were, it is certain, that this complaint of theirs much exasperated the king’s mind, who saw clearly by this proceeding, that the League, notwithstanding its reunion with him, had still a separate interest of its own, and extremely opposite to his. I will adventure to say farther, that he was then fully persuaded of it, when he perceived, that the Duke of Guise, who was the true head of it, was evidently more powerful than himself in those estates. For besides, that the greatest part of the deputies had been elected by the factious intrigues of his dependants in the provinces, those who were chosen to preside over the several orders, that is to say, the Cardinals of Bourbon and of Guise for the clergy; the Count of Brissac and the Baron of Magnac for the nobility; and the provost of merchants, La Chapelle Martau, for the third order, were all of them entirely at the duke’s devotion. Insomuch, that at the second session, after the edict of reunion had been solemnly confirmed, sworn to again, and passed into a fundamental law of the state, when the petitions of the three orders were read, he saw, that, under pretence of desiring to reform some abuses which were crept into the state, they were filled with an infinite number of propositions, which tended to the manifest diminution, or rather the annihilation, of the royal authority; and to reduce the government to that pass, that there should remain to the king no more than the empty name and vain appearance of a sovereign monarch; and that all the real and essential part of sovereignty should be in the League, which absolutely depended on the Duke of Guise.