suspicion that any seditious design had ever
been entertained by him. In default of something better, therefore, the
queen mother endeavored to make capital out of two passages of these
private manuscripts. In one--it was, we are told, the will of the admiral,
written toward the end of the third civil war[1063]--he dissuaded Charles
from assigning to his brothers appanages that might diminish the authority
of the crown. Catharine triumphantly showed it to Alencon. "See!" said
she; "this is your good friend the admiral, whom you so greatly loved and
respected!" "I know not," replied the young prince, "how much of a friend
he was to me; but certainly he showed by this advice how much he loved the
king."[1064] With Walsingham a similar attempt was made to deprive the
murdered hero of Queen Elizabeth's sympathy, but with as little success.
"To the end you may see how little your mistress was beholden to him,"
said Catharine de' Medici one day to the English ambassador, "you may see
a discourse found with his testament, made at such time as he was sick at
Rochel, wherein, amongst other advices that he gave to the king my son,
this is one, that he willed him in any case to keep the queen, your
mistress, and the King of Spain as low as he could, as a thing that tended
much to the safety and maintenance of this crown." "To that I answered,"
says Walsingham, "that in this point, howsoever he was affected towards
the queen my mistress, he showed himself a most true and faithful subject
to the crown of France, and the Queen's Majestie, my mistress, made the
more account of him, for that she knew him faithfully affected to the
same."[1065]

[Sidenote: Coligny's memory declared infamous.]

[Sidenote: Petty indignities.]

The complete absence of proof of all designs save the most patriotic,
and, on the other hand, the clear evidence that Coligny sought for the
quiet and growth of the religious community to which he belonged, only in
connection with the honor and prosperity of his own country, did not deter
the pliant parliament from pursuing the course prescribed for it. A little
more than two months after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (October
the twenty-seventh, 1572), the admiral's sentence was formally pronounced.
He was proclaimed a traitor and the author of a conspiracy against the
king; his goods were confiscated, his memory declared infamous. His
children were degraded from their rank as nobles, and pronounced "igno