out, by some brilliant deed, the infamy of a sentence which he had incurred rather through another’s than his own crime.  He, then, readily offered his services to those who were looking out for a second leader, and he undertook to scour the kingdom in order to win over the men whose names had been given him.  He got from them all a promise to meet him at Nantes in February, 1560, and he there made them a long and able speech against the Guises, ending by saying, ’God bids us to obey kings even when they ordain unjust things, and there is no doubt but that they who resist the powers that God has set up do resist His will.  We have this advantage, that we, ever full of submission to the prince, are set against none but traitors hostile to their king and their country, and so much the more dangerous in that they nestle in the very bosom of the state, and, in the name and clothed with the authority of a king who is a mere child, are attacking the kingdom and the king himself.  Now, in order that you may not suppose that you will be acting herein against your consciences, I am quite willing to be the first to protest and take God to witness that I will not think, or say, or do anything against the king, against the queen his mother, against the princes his brothers, or against those of his blood; and that, on the contrary, I will defend their majesty and their dignity, and, at the same time, the authority of the laws and the liberty of the country against the tyranny of a few foreigners.’” [De Thou, t. iii. pp. 467-480.]

“Out of so large an assemblage,” adds the historian, “there was not found to be one whom so delicate an enterprise caused to recoil, or who asked for time to deliberate.  It was agreed that, before anything else, a large number of persons, without arms and free from suspicion, should repair to court and there present a petition to the king, beseeching him not to put pressure upon consciences any more, and to permit the free exercise of religion; that at almost the same time a chosen body of horsemen should repair to Blois, where the king was, that their accomplices should admit them into the town and present a new petition to the king against the Guises, and that, if these princes would not withdraw and give an account of their administration, they should be attacked sword in hand; and, lastly, that the Prince of Conde, who had wished his name to be kept secret up to that time, should put himself at the head of the conspirators.  The 15th of June was the day fixed for the execution of it all.”

But the Guises were warned; one of La Renaudie’s friends had revealed the conspiracy to the Cardinal of Lorraine’s secretary; and from Spain, Germany, and Italy they received information as to the conspiracy hatched against them.  The cardinal, impetuous and pusillanimous too, was for calling out the troops at once; but his brother the duke, “who was not easily startled,” was opposed to anything demonstrative.  They removed the king to the castle of Amboise, a