Henry III. was scarcely less disturbed, but in quite a different way, than the Duke of Guise.  For a long time past he had been thinking about getting rid of the latter, just as he had thought for a long time, twenty years before, about getting rid of Admiral de Coligny; but since the date of his escape from the popular rising on the day of the Barricades, he had hoped that, thanks to the adoption of the edict of union and to the convocation of the states-general, he would escape the yoke of the Duke of Guise.  He saw every day that he had been mistaken; the League, and consequently the Duke of Guise, had more power than he with the states-general; in vain had the king changed nearly all his ministers; in vain had he removed his principal favorite, the Duke of Epernon, from the government of Normandy to that of Provence; he did not obtain from the states-general what he demanded, that is, the money he wanted; and the states required of him administrative reforms, sound enough at bottom, but suggested by the Duke of Guise with an interested object, and calculated to shackle the kingly authority even more than could be done by Guise himself directly.  At the same time that Guise was urging on the states-general in this path, he demanded to be made constable, not by the king any longer, but by the states themselves.  The kingship was thus being squeezed between the haughty supremacy of the great lords, substitutes for the feudal regimen, and the first essays of that free government which is nowadays called the parliamentary regimen.  Henry III. determined with fear and trembling to disembarrass himself of his two rivals, of the Duke of Guise by assassination, and of the states-general by packing them off home.  He did not know how intimately the two great questions of which the sixteenth century was the great cradle, the question of religious liberty and that of political liberty, were connected one with the other, and would be prosecuted jointly or successively in the natural progress of Christian civilization, or through what trials kings and people would have to pass before succeeding in any effectual solution of them.

On the 18th of December, 1588, during an entertainment given by Catherine de’ Medici on the marriage of her niece, Christine de Lorraine, with Ferdinand de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Henry III. summoned to his cabinet three of his most intimate and safest confidants, Marshal d’Aumont, Nicholas d’Angennes, Lord of Rambouillet, and Sieur de Beauvais Nangis.  After having laid before them all the Duke of Guise’s intrigues against him and the perils of the position in which they placed him, “What ought I to do?” he said; “help me to save myself by some speedy means.”  They asked the king to give them twenty-four hours to answer in.  Next day, the 19th, Sieur de Maintenon, brother of Rambouillet, and Alphonso Corso d’Ornano Were added to the party; only one of them was of opinion that the Duke of Guise should at once be arrested and