Meanwhile the Court of Paris was rapidly becoming a scene of anarchy and confusion.  The Prince de Conti and the Comte de Soissons were alike candidates for the government of Normandy, which the Regent, from its importance and the physical disqualifications of the Prince, conferred, despite the solicitations of Madame de Conti, upon M. de Soissons; and she had no sooner come to this decision than the two Princes were at open feud, supported by their several partisans, and the streets of the capital were the theatre of constant violence and uproar.  The Duc d’Epernon, who was the open ally of the Count, on his side supported M. de Soissons in order to counterbalance the influence of the Prince de Conti and the Guises; an unfortunate circumstance for Marie, who had so unguardedly betrayed her gratitude for his prompt and zealous services at the first moment of her affliction, that the vain and ambitious Duke had profited by the circumstance to influence her opinions and measures so seriously as to draw down the most malicious suspicions of their mutual position, suspicions to which the antecedents of M. d’Epernon unhappily lent only too much probability.[84]

In addition to this open and threatening misunderstanding between two of the first Princes of the Blood, a new danger was created by the imprudence of the same noble, who, presuming upon his newly-acquired importance, uttered the most violent and menacing expressions against the Protestants, declaring that they had been tolerated too long, and that it would soon become necessary to reduce them to a proper sense of their insignificance; an opinion which he had no sooner uttered than the Marquis d’Ancre in his turn assured the Regent that if she desired to secure a happy and prosperous reign to her son, she had no alternative but to forbid the exercise of the reformed religion, to whose adherents the late King had owed his death.[85]

Conscious of the cabal which was organizing against them, and having been apprised that M. d’Epernon had doubled the number of his guards, the Ducs de Bouillon, de Guise, and de Sully adopted similar precautions, and even kept horses ready saddled in their stables in order to escape upon the instant should they be threatened with violence.  The minor nobility followed the example of their superiors, and soon every hotel inhabited by men of rank resembled a fortress, while the streets resounded with the clashing of arms and the trampling of horses, to the perpetual terror of the citizens.

Coupled with these purely personal feuds others were generated of an official nature, no less subversive of public tranquillity.  M. de Villeroy had purchased the government of Lyons from the Duc de Vendome, for his son the Comte d’Alincourt, having at the same time disposed of the appointment of Lieutenant of the King previously held by the Count, and this arrangement was no sooner concluded than he resolved to solicit from the Queen a force of three hundred