After the opening of the states-general and the success he obtained thereat, Guise appeared, if not more anxious, at any rate more attentive to the warnings he received.  On the 10th of December, 1588, he wrote to Commander Moreo, confidential agent from the King of Spain to him, “You cannot imagine what alarms have been given me since your departure.  I have so well provided against them that my enemies have not seen their way to attempting anything. . . .  But expenses have grown upon me to such an extent that I have great need of your prompt assistance. . . .  I have now so much credit with this assembly that I have hitherto made it dance to my tune, and I hope that as to what remains to be decreed I shall be quite able to maintain the same authority.”  Some of his partisans advised him to go away for a while to Orleans; but he absolutely refused, repeating, with the Archbishop of Lyons, “He who leaves the game loses it.”  One evening, in a little circle of intimates, on the 21st of December, a question arose whether it would not be advisable to prevent the king’s designs by striking at his person.  The Cardinal of Guise begged his brother to go away, assuring him that his own presence would suffice for the direction of affairs:  but, “They are in such case, my friend,” said the Balafre, “that, if I saw death coming in at the window, I would not consent to go out by the door to avoid it.”  His cousin, the Duke of Elbeuf, paid him a visit at night to urge him to withdraw himself from the plot hatched against him.  “If it were necessary to lose my life in order to reap the proximate fruits of the states’ good resolution,” said Guise, “that is what I have quite made up my mind to.  Though I had a hundred lives, I would devote them all to the service of God and His church, and to the relief of the poor people for whom I feel the greatest pity;” then, touching the Duke of Elbeuf upon the shoulder, he said, “Go to bed, cousin;” and, taking away his hand and laying it upon his own heart, he added, “Here is the doublet of innocence.”  On the evening of the 22d of December, 1588, when Charlotte de Semblancay, Marchioness of Noirmoutiers, to whom he was tenderly attached, pressed him to depart, or at any rate not to be present at the council next day, the only answer he made her was to hum the following ditty, by Desportes, a poet of the day:—­

               “My little Rose, a little spell
               Of absence changed that heart of thine;
               And I, who know the change full well,
               Have found another place for mine. 
               No more such fair but fickle she
               Shall find me her obedient;
               And, flighty shepherdess, we’ll see
               Which of the twain will first repent.”