The reception they there met with cannot be better described than it has been by the Duke of Aumale:  “Not one of the crown’s officers came to receive the princes; no honor was paid them; the streets were deserted, silent, and occupied by a military guard.  In conformity with usage, the King of Navarre presented himself on horseback at the great gate of the royal abode; it remained closed.  He had to pocket the insult, and pass on foot through the wicket, between a double row of gentlemen wearing an air of insolence.  The king awaited the princes in his chamber; behind him were ranged the Guises and the principal lords; not a word, not a salutation on their part.  After this freezing reception, Francis II. conducted the two brothers to his mother, who received them, according to Regnier de la Planche’s expression, ‘with crocodile’s tears.’  The Guises did not follow them thither, in order to escape any personal dispute, and so as not to be hearers of the severe words which they had themselves dictated to the young monarch.  The king questioned Conde sharply; but the latter, ’who was endowed with great courage, and spoke as well as ever any prince or gentleman in the world, was not at all startled, and defended his cause with many good and strong reasons,’ protesting his own innocence and accusing the Guises of calumniation.  When he haughtily alluded to the word of honor which had been given him, the king, interrupting him, made a sign; and the two captains of the guard, Breze and Chavigny, entered and took the prince’s sword.  He was conducted to a house in the city, near the Jacobins’, which was immediately barred, crenelated, surrounded by soldiers, and converted into a veritable bastile.  Whilst they were removing him thither, Conde exclaimed loudly against this brazen violation of all the promises of safety by which he had been lured on when urged to go to Orleans.  The only answer he received was his committal to absolutely solitary confinement and the withdrawal of his servants.  The King of Navarre vainly asked to have his brother’s custody confided to him; he obtained nothing but a coarse refusal; and he himself, separated from his escort, was kept under ocular supervision in his apartment.”

The trial of the Prince of Conde commenced immediately.  He was brought before the privy council.  He claimed, as a prince of the blood and knight of the order of St. Michael, his right to be tried only by the court of Parliament furnished with the proper complement of peers and knights of the order.  This latter safeguard was worth nothing in his case, for there had been created, just lately, eighteen new knights, all friends and creatures of the Guises.  His claim, however, was rejected; and he repeated it, at the same time refusing to reply to any interrogation, and appealing “from the king ill advised to the king better advised.”  A priest was sent to celebrate mass in his chamber:  but “I came,” said he, “to clear myself from the