was already up. I had a fine racket in my head, and so had
she, and for the time there was no decision come to save to have the
admiral despatched by some means or other. It being impossible any
longer to employ stratagems and artifices, it would have to be done
openly, and the king brought round to that way of thinking. We agreed
that, in the afternoon, we would go and pay him a visit in his closet,
whither we would get the Sieur de Nevers, Marshals de Tavannes and de
Retz, and Chancellor de Birague to come, merely to have their opinion as
to the means to be adopted for the execution, which we had already
determined upon, my mother and I."

On Saturday, the 23d of August, in the afternoon, the queen-mother, the
Duke of Anjou, Marshals do Tavannes and de Retz, the Duke of Nevers, and
the Chancellor de Birague met in the king's closet, who was irresolute
and still talking of exacting from the Guises heavy vengeance for the
murderous attack upon Coligny. Catherine "represented to him that the
party of the Huguenots had already seized this occasion for taking up
arms against him; they had sent," she said, "several despatches to
Germany to procure a levy of ten thousand reiters, and to the cantons of
the Swiss for another levy of ten thousand foot; the French captains,
partisans of the Huguenots, had already, most of them, set out to raise
levies within the kingdom time and place of meeting had already been
assigned and determined. All the Catholics, on their side," added
Catherine, "disgusted with so long a war and harassed by so many kinds of
calamities, have resolved to put a stop to them; they have decided
amongst them to elect a captain-general, to form a league offensive and
defensive against the Huguenots. The whole of France would thus be seen
armed and divided into two great parties, between which the king would
remain isolated, without any command and with about as much obedience.
For so much ruin and calamity in anticipation and already within a
finger's reach, and for the slaughter of so many thousands of men, a
preventive may be found in a single sword-thrust; all that is necessary
is to kill the admiral, the head and front of all the civil wars; the
designs and the enterprises of the Huguenots will die with him, and the
Catholics, satisfied with the sacrifice of two or three men, will remain
forever in obedience to the king. . . ." "At the beginning," continues
the Duke of Anjou, in his account, "the