and with long steps, often looking towards me askance and with a very evil eye, sometimes laying his hand upon his dagger, and in so excited a fashion that I expected nothing else but that he would come and take me by the collar to poniard me.  I was very vexed that I had gone in, reflecting upon the peril I was in, but still more upon how to get out of it; which I did so dexterously, that, whilst he was walking with his back turned to me, I retreated quickly towards the door, which I opened, and, with a shorter obeisance than at my entry, I made my exit, which was scarcely perceived by him until I was outside.  And straightway I went to look for the queen my mother; and, putting together all reports, notifications, and suspicions, the time, and past circumstances, in conjunction with this last meeting, we remained both of us easily persuaded, and as it were certain, that it was the admiral who had impressed the king with some bad and sinister opinion of us, and we resolved from that moment to rid ourselves of him.”

One idea immediately occurred to Catherine and her son.  Two persons felt a passionate hatred towards Coligny; they were the widow of Duke Francis of Guise, Anne d’Este, become Duchess of Nemours by a second marriage, and her son Henry de Guise, a young man of twenty-two.  They were both convinced that Coligny had egged on Poltrot to murder Duke Francis, and they had sworn to exact vengeance.  Being informed of the queen-mother’s and the Duke of Anjou’s intention, they entered into it eagerly; the young Duke of Guise believed his mother quite capable of striking down the admiral in the very midst of one of the great assemblies at court; the fair ladies of the sixteenth century were adepts in handling dagger and pistol.  In default of the Duchess of Nemours, her son was thought of for getting rid of Coligny.  “It was at one time decided,” says the Duke de Bouillon in his Memoires, “that M. de Guise should kill the admiral during a tilt-at-the-ring which the king gave in the garden of the Louvre, and in which all Messieurs were to lead sides.  I was on that of the duke, who was believed to have an understanding with the admiral.  On this occasion, it was so managed that our dresses were not ready, and the late duke and his side did not tilt at all.  The resolution against the admiral was changed prudently; inasmuch as it was very perilous, for the person of the king and of Messieurs, to have determined to kill him in that place, there being present more than four hundred gentlemen of the religion, who might have gone very far in case of an assault upon that lord, who was so much beloved by them.”  Everything considered, it was thought more expedient to employ for the purpose an inferior agent; Catherine and the Duke of Anjou sent for a Gascon captain, a dependant of the house of Lorraine, whom they knew to be resolute and devoted.  “We had him shown the means he should adopt,” says the Duke of Anjou, “in attacking him whom we had in our eye; but, having well