people.”  Catherine yielded on nearly every point, at the same time, however, continually resuming and prolonging the discussion.  One of the duke’s most trusty confidants, Francis de Mainville, entered and whispered in his ear.  “Madame,” cried the duke, “whilst your Majesty has been amusing me here, the king is off from Paris to harry me and destroy me!” Henry III., indeed, had taken horse at the Tuileries, and, attended by his principal councillors, unbooted and cloakless, had issued from the New gate, and set out on the road to St. Cloud.  Equipping him in haste, his squire, Du Halde, had put his spur on wrong, and would have set it right, but, “That will do,” said the king; “I am not going to see my mistress; I have a longer journey to make.”  It is said that the corps on guard at the Nesle gate fired from a distance a salute of arquebuses after the fugitive king, and that a crowd assembled on the other bank of the river shouted insults after him.  At the height of Chaillot Henry pulled up, and turning round towards Paris, “Ungrateful city,” he cried, “I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not enter thy walls again but by the breach.”

It is said that on hearing of the Duke of Guise’s sudden arrival at Paris, Pope Sixtus V. exclaimed, “Ah! what rashness!  To thus go and put himself in the hands of a prince he has so outraged!” And some days afterwards, on the news that the king had received the Duke of Guise and nothing had come of it, “Ah, dastard prince! poor creature of a prince, to have let such a chance escape him of getting rid of a man who seems born to be his destruction!” [De Thou, t. x. p. 266.]

When the king was gone, Guise acted the master in Paris.  He ordered the immediate delivery into his hands of the Bastille, the arsenal, and the castle of Vincennes.  Ornano, governor of the Bastille, sent an offer to the king, who had arrived at Chartres, to defend it to the last extremity.  “I will not expose to so certain a peril a brave man who may be necessary to me elsewhere,” replied the king.  Guise caused to be elected at Paris a new town-council and a new provost of tradesmen, all taken from amongst the most ardent Leaguers.  He at the same time exerted himself to restore order; he allowed all royalists who wished to depart to withdraw to Chartres; he went in person and pressed the premier president of Parliament, Achille de Harlay, to resume the course of justice.  “It is great pity, sir,” said Harlay, “when the servant drives out the master; this assembly is founded (seated) on the fleur-de-lis; being established by the king, it can act only for his service.  We will all lose our lives to a man rather than give way a whit to the contrary.”  “I have been in many battles,” said Guise, as he went out, “in assaults and encounters the most dangerous in the world; and I have never been so overcome as at my reception by this personage.”  At the same time that he was trying to exercise authority and restore order, unbridled