for this change of habits and for becoming an indolent and voluptuous king, set upon taking his pleasure in his court and isolating himself from his people.

The condition and ideas of France were also changing, but to issue in the assumption of quite a different character and to receive development in quite a different direction.

Catholics or Protestants, agents of the king's government or malcontents, all were getting a taste for and adopting the practice of independence and a vigorous and spontaneous activity.

The bonds of the feudal system were losing their hold, and were not yet replaced by those of a hierarchically organized administration.
Religious creeds and political ideas were becoming, for thoughtful and straightforward spirits, rules of conduct, powerful motives of action, and they furnished the ambitious with effective weapons.

The theologians of the Catholic church and of the Reformed churches--on one side the Cardinal of Lorraine, Cardinals Campeggi and Sadolet, and other learned priests or prelates, and on the other side Calvin, Theodore de Beze, Melancthon, and Bucer--were working with zeal to build up into systems of dogma their interpretations of the great facts of Christianity, and they succeeded in implanting a passionate attachment to them in their flocks.
Independently of these religious controversies, superior minds, profound lawyers, learned scholars were applying their energies to founding, on a philosophical basis and historic principles, the organization of governments and the reciprocal rights of princes and peoples.