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Updated: May 26, 2025
The secret of Catherine's wily policy was rightly understood by the Guises; they felt certain that the queen cared nothing for this mysterious assembly, and was only temporizing with her new allies in order to secure a period of peace until the majority of Charles IX.; but none the less did they deceive the Connetable into fearing a collusion of real interests between the queen and the Bourbons, whereas, in reality, Catherine was playing them all one against another.
Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first shock which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of opposing interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that sooner or later she should return to the Guises and combine with them and the Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots.
What adroit persuasion must Catherine have employed to have obtained the command of the armies for the Duc d'Anjou under a young and brave king, thirsting for glory, capable of military achievement, generous, and in presence, too, of the Connetable de Montmorency. In the eyes of the statesmen of Europe the Duc d'Anjou had all the honors of the Saint-Bartholomew, and Charles IX. all the odium.
Finding the familiar, worn arm of the chair, he seated himself with a heavy sigh. His lips moved, and he shook his head now and then, as though in protest against some unspoken thought. Presently he brought his clinched hand down heavily on the table, and said aloud: "They lie they lie! The Connetable lies!
She began by speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin. "You see, my dear Connetable," she said, "that I receive them without ceremony."
Finally, the precise night of her flight was decided on; and this had no sooner been determined than M. de Coeuvres despatched a courier to the Connétable, informing him that there now remained no doubt of the immediate return of the Princess to his protection.
Once decided, Beauvouloir had confidence in the chances and changes of life; it might be that the duke would die before the marriage; besides, there were many examples of such marriage; a peasant girl in Dauphine, Francoise Mignot, had lately married the Marechal d'Hopital; the son of the Connetable Anne de Montmorency had married Diane, daughter of Henri II. and a Piedmontese lady named Philippa Duc.
"Distrust the admiral's toothpick, the No of the Connetable, and Catherine's Yes," was a court proverb of that day. After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this atrocious levity.
"I am sure that they were here wearing these black gowns and huge red aprons in the twelfth century. What is this?" he said, stopping abruptly, to a boy of six who was digging mud at the foot of an ancient ivy-covered tower. "C'est le tour du Connetable," the child lisped. "Et v'la, monsieur!" pointing to a filthy pen with a gate of black oak; "v'la le donjon de Clisson!"
As I came up, he walked his horse forward to meet me, and I beheld a man in the uniform of the gardes du corps, in whom presently I recognised the little sparrow Malpertuis, with whom I had exchanged witticisms at Choisy. He was the one man wanting to complete the trinity that had come upon us at the inn of the Connetable.
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