hinations of her daughter,
when, as if to convince her of her injustice, she suddenly received
secret intelligence from the young Queen of Navarre, that the Duc
d'Alencon had entered into a new league with the Bourbon Princes. It is
difficult to account for the motive which led Marguerite to make this
revelation, when her extraordinary affection for her brother, and the
anxiety which she had universally exhibited for the safety of her
husband, are remembered; thus much, however, is certain, that she did
not betray the conspiracy (which had been revealed to her by a Lutheran
gentleman whom she had saved during the massacre of St. Bartholomew)
until she had exacted a pledge that the lives of all who were involved
in it should be spared. In her anxiety to secure the secret, the
Queen-mother, on her side, gave a solemn promise to that effect, and she
redeemed her word; while from the immediate precautions which she caused
to be taken the plot was necessarily annihilated.

The Princess had, however, by the knowledge which she thus displayed of
the movements of the Huguenot party, only increased the suspicions both
of the Queen-mother and her son; and the Court of France became ere long
so distasteful to Henry of Navarre, from the constant affronts to which
he was subjected, and the undisguised _surveillance_ which fettered all
his movements, that he resolved to effect his escape from Paris, an
example in which he was imitated by the Duc d'Alencon and the Prince de
Conde, the former of whom retired to Champagne, and the latter to one of
his estates, and with both of whom he shortly afterwards entered into a
formidable league.

Henri III, exasperated by the departure of the three Princes, declared
his determination to revenge the affront upon Marguerite, who had not
been enabled to accompany her husband; but the representations of the
Queen-mother induced him to forego this ungenerous project, and he was
driven to satiate his thirst for vengeance upon her favourite
attendant, Mademoiselle de Torigni,[10] of whose services he had already
deprived her, on the pretext that so young a Princess should not be
permitted to retain about her person such persons as were likely to
exert an undue influence over her mind, and to possess themselves of her
secrets. In the first paroxysm of his rage, he even sentenced this lady
to be drowned; nor is it doubtful that this iniquitous and unfounded
sentence would have been really carried into e