He got from them all a promise to meet him at Nantes in February, 1560, and he there made them a long and able speech against the Guises, ending by saying, 'God bids us to obey kings even when they ordain unjust things, and there is no doubt but that they who resist the powers that God has set up do resist His will.

We have this advantage, that we, ever full of submission to the prince, are set against none but traitors hostile to their king and their country, and so much the more dangerous in that they nestle in the very bosom of the state, and, in the name and clothed with the authority of a king who is a mere child, are attacking the kingdom and the king himself.

Now, in order that you may not suppose that you will be acting herein against your consciences, I am quite willing to be the first to protest and take God to witness that I will not think, or say, or do anything against the king, against the queen his mother, against the princes his brothers, or against those of his blood; and that, on the contrary, I will defend their majesty and their dignity, and, at the same time, the authority of the laws and the liberty of the country against the tyranny of a few foreigners.'" [De Thou, t.iii.

pp.

467-480.] "Out of so large an assemblage," adds the historian, "there was not found to be one whom so delicate an enterprise caused to recoil, or who asked for time to deliberate.