had recovered, in June, 1593, so good an army that "by means of it," he wrote to Ferdinand de' Medici, "I shall be able to reduce the city of Paris in so short a time as will cause you great contentment." But he was too judicious and too good a patriot not to see that it was not by an indefinitely prolonged war that he would be enabled to enter upon definitive possession of his crown, and that it was peace, religious peace, that he must restore to France in order to really become her king.

He entered resolutely, on the 15th of July, 1593, upon the employment of the moral means which alone could enable him to attain this end; he assembled at Mantes the conference of prelates and doctors, Catholic and Protestant, which he had announced as the preface to his conversion.

He had previously, on the 13th of May, given assurance to the Protestants as to their interests by means of a declaration on the part of eight amongst the principal Catholic lords attached to his person who undertook, "with his Majesty's authorization, that nothing should be done in the said assemblies to the prejudice of friendly union between the Catholics who recognized his Majesty and them of the religion, or contrary to the edicts of pacification." On the 21st of July, the prelates and doctors of the conference transferred themselves from Mantes to St.Denis.

On Friday, July 23, in the morning, Henry wrote to Gabriel le d'Estrees, "Sunday will be the day when I shall make the summerset that brings down the house" (_le, saut perilleux_).

A few hours after using such flippant language to his favorite, he was having a long conference with the prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest questions about the religion he was just embracing, asking them for more satisfactory explanations on certain points, and repeating to them the grounds of his resolution.