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"On my way back from visiting the Connetable, at Melun, where I met him with the Duchesse de Berry, whom he was most impatient to convey to Savoie, that he might return here and open the eyes of the chancellor Olivier, who is now completely duped by the Lorrains. As soon as Monsieur l'Hopital saw the true object of the Guises he determined to support your interests.
We shall have the Connetable on our side; Monseigneur has just been to see him at Chantilly; but he does not wish to move without an order from his masters. Being the uncle of Monseigneur, he will not leave him in the lurch; and this generous prince does not hesitate to fling himself into danger to force Anne de Montmorency to a decision.
"The connetable said it was cheaper to let the chevalier go free than to feed him in the Vier Prison," dryly explained Ranulph, helping himself to roasted conger eel and eyeing hungrily the freshly-made black butter Guida was taking from a wooden trencher. "The Royal Court is stingy," he added. "'It's nearer than Jean Noe, who got married in his red queminzolle, as we say on Jersey "
The Guises laid hands on power with incredible audacity. The Duc de Guise was placed in command of the army; the Connetable was dismissed; the cardinal took charge of the treasury and the clergy.
No sooner did the tolling of the bells announce to the town of Orleans that Francois II. was dead, and the rumor spread that the Connetable de Montmorency had ordered the flinging open of the gates of the town, than Tourillon, the glover, rushed up into the garret of his house and went to a secret hiding-place. "Good heavens! can he be dead?" he cried.
"It was said the Royal Court was to make him a gift, in remembrance of the Battle of Jersey." Ranulph turned his head away from her to the child, and beckoned him over. The child came instantly. As Ranulph lifted him on his knee he answered Guida: "My father did not take it." "Then they said you were to be connetable the grand monsieur. "She smiled at him in a friendly way.
Naturally vain and volatile, dazzled by the consciousness that she had become a sort of heroine, and moreover saddened by her memories of the brilliant existence from which she had been so suddenly shut out, the widowed bride would gladly have followed her husband to the gayer city of Milan, even wounded as she was by his indifference and coldness, rather than remain at the austere Court of the pious Infanta, where she was aware that her words and actions were subjected to the closest scrutiny; but the will of her father compelled her to remain at Brussels, the Connétable being apprehensive, from the marked neglect and suspicion evinced towards her by the Prince, that this latter might endeavour to remove her beyond the reach of her friends in order to hold her more completely in his power.
So that as the twilight was deepening into night we drew rein before the hostelry of the Connetable, in the only square the little township boasts, and from the landlord I had that obsequious reception which is ever accorded to him who travels with a body-servant.
The Comte de Soissons urged his privilege of birth, and haughtily declined to advance any other plea; while the Connétable de Montmorency loudly declared that no council could legally be formed from which he was excluded; and the Cardinal de Joyeuse maintained the same argument.
The Connetable de Montmorency was, with Diane de Poitiers, to whom he was closely bound, the master of the State. Catherine was therefore less happy and less powerful after she became queen of France than while she was dauphiness.
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