angle of interests which were struggling together at court in order
to discover some means of rescuing his son. It was useless to think of
Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier. No one about the court
whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory information
about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such utter despair
that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal himself, when he
learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great stain upon that
good man's life) had consented to be one of the judges of the Prince de
Conde. The old furrier went at once to see him, and learned at last that
Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.

Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way
to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for
the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the
States-general. The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself,
secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a
father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades
of religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God
without caring what insignia men give to Him. The poor old man, repulsed
in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the streets.
Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing; Monsieur de
Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the house of
Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and cardinal allowed
nothing that related to Christophe to transpire. De Thou, whose fame is
somewhat tarnished by the part he played at this crisis, endeavored to
give some hope to the poor father; but he trembled so much himself for
the fate of his godson that his attempts at consolation only alarmed the
old man still more. Lecamus roamed the streets; in three months he had
shrunk visibly. His only hope now lay in the warm friendship which for
so many years had bound him to the Hippocrates of the sixteenth century.
Ambroise Pare tried to say a word to Queen Mary on leaving the chamber
of the king, who was then indisposed; but no sooner had he named
Christophe than the daughter of the Stuarts, nervous at the prospect
of her fate should any evil happen to the king, and believing that the
Reformers were attempting to poison him, cried out:--

"If my uncles had only listened to me, that fanatic would have been
hanged already."

The evening on which th