of Navarre, and Catherine had come to an agreement with him about the partition of power between herself and him at the death of the king her son.  She had written to the Constable de Montmorency, a rival of the Guises and their foe though a stanch Catholic, to make haste to Orleans, where his presence would be required.  As soon as Chancellor de l’Hospital became aware of the proposals which were being made by the Guises to the queen-mother, he flew to her and opposed them with all the energy of his great and politic mind and sterling nature.  Was she going to deliver the Prince of Conde to the scaffold, the house of Bourbon to ruin, France to civil war, and the independence of the crown and of that royal authority which she was on the point of wielding herself to the tyrannical domination of her rivals the Lorraine princes and of their party?  Catherine listened with great satisfaction to this judicious and honest language.  When the crown passed to her son Charles she was free from any serious anxiety as to her own position and her influence in the government.  The new king, on announcing to the Parliament the death of his brother, wrote to them that “confiding in the virtues and prudence of the queen-mother, he had begged her to take in hand the administration of the kingdom, with the wise counsel and advice of the King of Navarre and the notables and great personages of the late king’s council.”  A few months afterwards the states-general, assembling first at Orleans and afterwards at Pontoise, ratified this declaration by recognizing the placement of “the young King Charles IX.’s guardianship in the hands of Catherine de’ Medici, his mother, together with the principal direction of affairs, but without the title of regent.”  The King of Navarre was to assist her in the capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.  Twenty-five members specially designated were to form the king’s privy council. [Histoire des Etats generaux, by M. Picot, t. ii. p. 73.] And in the privacy of her motherly correspondence Catherine wrote to the Queen of Spain, her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., “Madame, my dear daughter, all I shall tell you is, not to be the least anxious, and to rest assured that I shall spare no pains to so conduct myself that God and everybody may have occasion to be satisfied with me. . . .  You have seen the time when I was as happy as you are, not dreaming of ever having any greater trouble than that of not being loved as I should have liked to be by the king your father.  God took him from me, and is not content with that; He has taken from me your brother, whom I loved you well know how much, and has left me with three young children, and in a kingdom where all is division, having therein not a single man in whom I can trust, and who has not some particular object of his own.”