r strongholds. Four weeks later Alamanni announced that the Queen's
pious design for restoring unity of faith would, by the grace of God, be
speedily accomplished. On the 9th of August Petrucci was able to report
that the plan arranged at Bayonne was near execution.[26] Yet he was not
fully initiated. The Queen afterwards assured him that she had confided
the secret to no foreign resident except the Nuncio,[27] and Petrucci
resentfully complains that she had also consulted the Ambassador of
Savoy. Venice, like Florence and Savoy, was not taken by surprise. In
February the ambassador Contarini explained to the Senate the specious
tranquillity in France, by saying that the Government reckoned on the
death of the Admiral or the Queen of Navarre to work a momentous
change.[28] Cavalli, his successor, judged that a business so grossly
mismanaged showed no signs of deliberation.[29] There was another
Venetian at Paris who was better informed. The Republic was seeking to
withdraw from the league against the Turks; and her most illustrious
statesman, Giovanni Michiel, was sent to solicit the help of France in
negotiating peace.[30] The account which he gave of his mission has been
pronounced by a consummate judge of Venetian State-Papers the most
valuable report of the sixteenth century.[31] He was admitted almost
daily to secret conference with Anjou, Nevers, and the group of Italians
on whom the chief odium rests; and there was no counsellor to whom
Catherine more willingly gave ear.[32] Michiel affirms that the
intention had been long entertained, and that the Nuncio had been
directed to reveal it privately to Pius V.[33]

Salviati was related to Catherine, and had gained her good opinion as
Nuncio in the year 1570. The Pope had sent him back because nobody
seemed more capable of diverting her and her son from the policy which
caused so much uneasiness at Rome.[34] He died many years later, with
the reputation of having been one of the most eminent Cardinals at a
time when the Sacred College was unusually rich in talent. Personally,
he had always favoured stern measures of repression. When the Countess
of Entremont was married to Coligny, Salviati declared that she had made
herself liable to severe penalties by entertaining proposals of marriage
with so notorious a heretic, and demanded that the Duke of Savoy should,
by all the means in his power, cause that wicked bride to be put out of
the way.[35] When the peace of St. Ger