The judge was reported to the king for this indulgence.

Henry praised him for it, adding that he would have pardoned the criminal if he had been brought before him.

Thus commenced, at the opening of his reign, the series of attempts to which he was destined to succumb, after seventeen years of good, able, generous, and mild government.
In Normandy, at Rouen, the royalist success was neither so easy nor so disinterested as it had been at Lyons.

Andrew de Brancas, Lord of Villars, an able man and valiant soldier, was its governor; he had served the League with zeal and determination; nevertheless, "from the month of August, 1593, immediately after the king's conversion, he had shown a disposition to become his servant, and to incline thereto all those whom he had in his power." [_Histoire du Parlement de Normandi,_ by M.
Floquet, t.iii.

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