he
tumult at Orleans on the death of the king, was acquitted in the first
instance, and appointed, in compensation for his sufferings, solicitor
to the Parliament, at the request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.

The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by
Catherine's first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes.
Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first shock
which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of opposing
interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that sooner or
later she should return to the Guises and combine with them and the
Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots. The proposed "colloquy"
which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and offered an
imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and enliven the
bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact, had already
begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in those
of Catherine. The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for the
Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim their
doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the ears of
all France. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the
idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church,
persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was
all-essential to her, six months of peace.

A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the
power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene,
preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned
from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his coronation,
Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot, appointed him
grand-almoner of France. This affection was shared by his brother the
Duc d'Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou's pupils. Catherine
heard the news of this appointment from the two Gondis during the
journey from Rheims to Paris. She had counted on that office in the gift
of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church with whom to oppose the
Cardinal de Lorraine. Her choice had fallen on the Cardinal de Tournon,
in whom she expected to find, as in l'Hopital, another _crutch_--the
word is her own. As soon as she reached the Louvre she sent for the
tutor, and her anger was such, on seeing the disaster to her policy
caused by the ambition of this son of