a shoemaker, that she was betrayed
into using the following extraordinary language, which several memoirs
of the day have handed down to us:--

"What!" she cried, "am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the
Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my
ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not satisfied
to be bishop of Auxerre?"

Amyot excused himself. He assured the queen that he had asked nothing;
the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son
of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.

"Be assured, _maitre_," replied Catherine (that being the name which the
two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer) "that
you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless you make
your pupil change his mind."

Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest
ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the
shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may
even have coveted a cardinal's hat, thought it prudent to temporize.
He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain. When
Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he was.
Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between Amyot and
the queen-mother.

"Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?"
cried the king.

He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry children
when their caprices are opposed.

"Madame," he said on entering, "did I not kindly sign the letter you
asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my kingdom?
Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours? And
here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy! The
chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years from
now, and you wish to treat me as a child. By God, I will be king, and a
king as my father and grandfather were kings!"

The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine
a revelation of her son's true character; it was like a blow in the
breast.

"He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!" she thought. "Monsieur,"
she said aloud, "the office of a king, in times like these, is a very
difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men with whom you have
to deal. You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your
mother, or better servants than those who ha