that she departed, craftily, leaving her suggestion to prey upon
his mind.

But once alone in her oratory with Anjou, her habitual torpor was
sloughed away. For once she quivered and crimsoned and raised her voice,
whilst for once her sleepy eyes kindled and flashed as she inveighed
against Coligny and the Huguenots.

For the moment, however, there was no more to be done. The stroke had
failed; Coligny had survived the attempt upon his life, and there was
danger that on the recoil the blow might smite those who had launched
it. But on the morrow, which was Saturday, things suddenly assumed a
very different complexion.

That great Catholic leader, the powerful, handsome Duke of Guise, who,
more than suspected of having inspired the attempted assassination, had
kept his hotel since yesterday, now sought the Queen-Mother with news
of what was happening in the city. Armed bands of Huguenot nobles were
riding through the streets, clamouring:

"Death to the assassins of the Admiral! Down with the Guisards!"

And, although a regiment of Gardes Francaises had been hastily brought
to Paris to keep order, the Duke feared grave trouble in a city
which the royal wedding had filled with Huguenot gentlemen and their
following. Then, too, there were rumours that the Huguenots were
arming everywhere--rumours which, whether true or not, were, under the
circumstances, sufficiently natural and probable to be taken seriously.

Leaving Guise in her oratory, and summoning her darling Anjou, Catherine
at once sought the King. She may have believed the rumours, and she may
even have stated them as facts beyond dispute so as to strengthen and
establish her case against Gaspard de Coligny.

"King Gaspard I," she told him, "is already taking his measures. The
Huguenots are arming; officers have been dispatched into the provinces
to levy troops. The Admiral has ordered the raising of ten thousand
horse in Germany, and another ten thousand Swiss mercenaries in the
Cantons."

He stared at her vacuously. Some such rumour had already reached him,
and he conceived that here was definite confirmation of it.

"You may determine now who are your friends, who your loyal servants,"
she told him. "How is so much force to be resisted in the state in which
you find yourself? The Catholics exhausted, and weary as they are by a
civil war in which their king was of little account to them, are going
to arm so as to offer what resistance they can without