DORLEANS, Louis, (1542-1629), a minor French poet and political pamphleteer, and a prominent partisan of the Catholic League, was born in 1542, probably at Paris, though one of his biographers states that Orleans was his birthplace. He studied under Jean Daurat, and after taking his degree in law began to practise at the bar with but slight success. He added little to his reputation by writing indifferent verses, and it was not until the League had taken the daring step of arresting the royalist members of parliament, that he was brought into prominence by being appointed its advocate-general. He maintained the position and claims of the League in language that was always strong and often insolent, going so far as to express regret that the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé had not been assassinated. He was, however, courageous enough to intercede with the duke of Mayenne for the inhabitants of Paris, but without effect. After this failure he continued the publication of violently-worded pamphlets intended to render the accession of Henry impossible. One of these, Le Banquet et Après-dînêe du Comte d ’ Arete, in which he accused Henry of insincerity in his return to the Roman Catholic faith, was so scurrilous as to be disapproved of by many members of the League. When Henry at length entered Paris, Dorléans was among the number of the proscribed. He took refuge in Antwerp, where he remained for nine years. At the expiration of that period he received a pardon, and returned to Paris, where he had not been long before he was imprisoned for sedition. The king, however, ordered him to be set free after he had been three months in the Conciergerie, and this generous conduct had the effect of attaching him ever afterwards to the cause of Henry. His last years ...