he more exalted in rank
reached the donjon, or castle-keep, but as they thought to set foot within
it, a trap-door opened and they too found themselves prisoners. It fared
better with the princes; for the success of each champion was measured by
a rigid heraldic scale. These passed the donjon, but, on a bridge leading
to the tower where slept the enchanted lady, a giant confronted them, and
in the midst of the combat the bridge was lowered, and they were taken, as
had been their predecessors. "The Duke of Vendome,[387] son of the late
duke, whom they call in France the Prince of Navarre--a boy apparently ten
or eleven years of age--crossed the bridge, and the giant pretended to
surrender; but he too was afterward repulsed like the rest." The Duke of
Orleans--whom the reader will more readily recognize under the title of
Duke of Anjou, which he, about this time, received--next entered the
lists. Naturally he penetrated further than his namesake of Navarre, and
"the giant showed more fear of him than of the other;" but a cloud
enveloped them both, and "thus the duke vanished from sight." King Charles
was the last to fight, and for his prowess it was reserved for him to
defeat the giant and deliver the lady.[388]

[Sidenote: The confraternities.]

The author of the pompous show had made a serious mistake. The giant
"League," before whom so many a champion failed, it was the lot not of
Charles, nor of Henry of Valois, but of the other Henry, of Navarre, to
overcome. That giant was already in existence, although still in his
infancy. For some time past the zealous papists, impatient of the sluggish
devotion of the court, had been forming "confreries," or fraternities,
whose members, bound together by a common oath, were pledged to the
support of the Roman Catholic religion.[389] The plan was a dangerous one,
and it shortly excited the apprehension of the king and his mother. "I am
told," Charles wrote in July, 1565, to one of his governors, "that in a
number of places in my realm there is a talk of establishing an
association amongst my subjects, who invite one another to join it. I beg
you to take measures to prevent that any be made for any purpose
whatsoever; but keep my subjects so far as possible united in the desire
to render me duty and obedience."[390] And to prove the sincerity of his
intentions, the French king ordered the late Edict of Pacification again
to be proclaimed by public crier in the streets of the sedit