Tavannes himself terms these expressions “an artful harangue;” but he says, “it moved, astounded, and dismayed the king, not so much on the score of the Huguenots as of his mother and brother, whose subtlety, ambition, and power in the state he knew; he marvelled to see his counsels thus revealed; he avowed them, asked pardon, promised obedience.  Having sown this distrust, having shot this first bolt, the queen-mother, still in displeasure, withdrew to Monceaux.  The trembling king followed her; he found her with his brother and Sieurs de Tavannes, de Retz, and the Secretary of State de Sauve, the last of whom threw himself upon his knees and received his Majesty’s pardon for having revealed his counsels to his mother.  The infidelity, the bravado, the audacity, the menaces, and the enterprises of the Huguenots were magnified with so much of truth and art that from friends behold them converted into enemies of the king, who, nevertheless, wavering as ever, could not yet give up the desire he had conceived of winning glory and reputation by war with Spain.”

A fresh incident increased the agitation in the royal circle.  In July, 1572, the throne of Poland had become vacant.  A Polish embassy came to offer it to the Duke of Anjou.  On his part and his mother’s, there was at first great eagerness to accept it; Catherine was charmed to see her favorite son becoming a king.  “If we had required,” says a Polish historian, “that the French should build a bridge of solid gold over the Vistula, they would have agreed.”  Hesitation soon took the place of eagerness; Henry demanded information, and took time to reply.  He had shown similar hesitation at the time of the negotiations entered upon in London, in 1571, with a view of making him the husband of Elizabeth, Queen of England:  Coligny, who was very anxious to have him away, pressed Charles IX. to insist upon a speedy solution.  “If Monsieur,” said he, “who would not have England by marriage, will not have Poland either by election, let him declare once for all that he will not leave France.”  The relations between the two brothers became day by day more uncomfortable:  two years later, Henry, for a brief period King of Poland, himself told the story of them to his physician Miron.  “When, by any chance,” he said, “the queen-mother and I, after the admiral’s departure, approached the king to speak to him of any matters, even those which concerned merely his pleasure, we found him marvellously quick-tempered and cross-grained, with rough looks and bearing, and his answers still more so.  One day, a very short time before the St. Bartholomew, setting out expressly from my quarters to go and see the king, somebody told me on inquiry that he was in his cabinet, whence the admiral, who had been alone with him a very long while, had just that instant gone out.  I entered at once, as I had been accustomed to do.  But as soon as the king my brother perceived me, he, without saying anything to me, began walking about furiously