Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. 2)

ANECDOTE REGARDING HENRY IV.

Neither Jean Châtel nor Ravaillac had any accomplices; their crime had been the crime of the times, the cry of religion was their only accomplice. It has often been printed that Ravaillac had made a trip to Naples, and that the Jesuit Alagona had predicted the death of the king in Naples, as a certain Chiniac repeats again. The Jesuits have never been prophets; had they been, they would have predicted their own destruction; but, on the contrary, these poor people have always assured that they would last until the end of the ages. One should never swear to anything.

ON THE ABJURATION OF HENRY IV.

The Jesuit Daniel says in vain to me, in his very dry and very faulty history of France, that Henry IV, before abjuring, had long been a Catholic. I will believe Henry IV himself more than the Jesuit Daniel. His letter to the beautiful Gabrielle, "it is tomorrow that I take the perilous leap," proves at least that he still had something other than Catholicism in his heart. If his great heart had long been penetrated by efficacious grace, he might perhaps have said to his mistress: "These bishops edify me"; but he said to her: "These people bore me." Are these the words of a good catechumen?

It is not a subject for pyrrhonism skepticism that the letters of this great man to Corisande d'Andouin,