arch in vain for a kind word in their behalf.

Meantime the second civil war in France had broken out. The hollow truce
by which the Guise party and the Huguenots had partly pretended to
deceive each other was hastened to its end; among other causes, by the
march of Alva, to the Netherlands. The Huguenots had taken alarm, for
they recognized the fellowship which united their foes in all countries
against the Reformation, and Conde and Coligny knew too well that the
same influence which had brought Alva to Brussels would soon create an
exterminating army against their followers. Hostilities were resumed with
more bitterness than ever. The battle of St. Denis--fierce, fatal, but
indecisive--was fought. The octogenarian hero, Montmorency, fighting like
a foot soldier, refusing to yield his sword, and replying to the
respectful solicitations of his nearest enemy by dashing his teeth down
his throat with the butt-end of his pistol, the hero of so many battles,
whose defeat at St. Quintin had been the fatal point in his career, had
died at last in his armor, bravely but not gloriously, in conflict with
his own countrymen, led by his own heroic nephew. The military control of
the Catholic party was completely in the hand of the Guises; the
Chancellor de l'Hopital had abandoned the court after a last and futile
effort to reconcile contending factions, which no human power could
unite; the Huguenots had possessed themselves of Rochelle and of other
strong places, and, under the guidance of adroit statesmen and
accomplished generals, were pressing the Most Christian monarch hard in
the very heart of his kingdom.

As early as the middle of October, while still in Antwerp, Alva had
received several secret agents of the French monarch, then closely
beleaguered in his capital. Cardinal Lorraine offered to place several
strong places of France in the hands of the Spaniard, and Alva had
written to Philip that he was disposed to accept the offer, and to render
the service. The places thus held would be a guarantee for his expenses,
he said, while in case King Charles and his brother should die, "their
possession would enable Philip to assert his own claim to the French
crown in right of his wife, the Salic law being merely a pleasantry."

The Queen Dowager, adopting now a very different tone from that which
characterized her conversation at the Bayonne interview, wrote to Alva,
that, if for want of 2000 Spanish musketeers, which she re