on receiving the news, "is one of the greatest services I could have had rendered me; M.du Plessis does business most thoroughly." On the 9th of May, 1590, not three months after the decree of the Parliament of Paris which had proclaimed him true and lawful King of France, Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, died at Fontenay, aged sixty-seven.

A few weeks before his death he had written to his nephew Henry IV.

a letter in which he recognized him as his sovereign.
The League was more than ever dominant in Paris; Henry IV.

could not think of entering there.

Before recommencing the war in his own name, he made Villeroi, who, after the death of Henry III., had rejoined the Duke of Mayenne, an offer of an interview in the Bois de Boulogne to see if there were no means of treating for peace.