On arriving in the evening at Tours, whither Henry III.

had fallen back, Rosny was taken to him, about midnight, at the top of the castle; the king sent him off that very night; he consented to everything that the King of Navarre proposed; promised him a town on the Loire, and said he was ready to make with him not a downright peace just at first, but "a good long truce, which, in their two hearts, would at once be an eternal peace and a sincere reconciliation." When Rosny got back to Chatellerault, "there was nothing but rejoicing; everybody ran to meet him; he was called 'god Rosny,' and one of his friends said to the rest, 'Do you see yon man?
By God, we shall all worship him, and he alone will restore France; I said so six years ago, and Villandry was of my opinion.'" Thus was the way paved and the beginning made, between the two kings, of an alliance demanded by their mutual interests, and still more strongly by the interests of France, ravaged and desolated, for nearly thirty years past, by religious civil wars.

Henry of Navarre had profound sympathy for his country's sufferings, an ardent desire to put a stop to them, and at the same time the instinct to see clearly that the day had come when the re-establishment of harmony and common action between himself and Henry de Valois was the necessary and at the same time possible means of attaining that great result.

On the 4th of March, 1589, soon after the states of Blois had been dismissed, he set before France, in an eloquent manifesto, the expression of his anxieties and his counsels: "I will speak freely," said he, "to myself first and then to others, that we may be all of us without excuse.

Let us not be puffed up with pride on one side or another.