d by a desire to blot out the horror excited in France by the
Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in public affairs; he
presided at the Council, and tried to seize the reins of government by
well-laid schemes. Though the queen-mother endeavored to check these
attempts of her son by employing all the means of influence over his
mind which her maternal authority and a long habit of domineering gave
her, his rush into distrust was so vehement that he went too far at the
first bound ever to return from it. The day on which his mother's speech
to the king of Poland was reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his
failing health, conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such
thoughts take possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can
remove them. In fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided
his wife and daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his
guard against Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring
to silence him, "Do not say that, monsieur!"

Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of
which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her sons
anything but "Monsieur," the queen-mother had detected in her son's
manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of vengeance.
But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking Catherine
unawares. She held ready in her hand at this moment the conspiracy
of the Duke d'Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract, by
another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making toward
emancipation. But, before employing this means, she wanted to remove
his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future
reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a
mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him? She felt herself at
this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her
relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action. She took
counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so
frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present crisis.

Though the habit of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had
given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty
and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet
vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers
now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No soverei