In fact, the Sieur Avenelles was thrown into a damp dungeon, without air, and his pretty wife placed in a room above him, out of consideration for her lover, who was the Sieur Scipion Sardini, a noble of Lucca, exceedingly rich, and, as has been before stated, a friend of Queen Catherine de Medici, who at that time did everything in concert with the Guises.  Then he went up quickly to the queen’s apartments, where a great secret council was then being held, and there the Italian learned what was going on, and the danger of the court.  Monseigneur Sardini found the privy counsellors much embarrassed and surprised at this dilemma, but he made them all agree, telling them to turn it to their own advantage; and to his advice was due the clever idea of lodging the king in the castle of Amboise, in order to catch the heretics there like foxes in a bag, and there to slay them all.  Indeed, everyone knows how the queen-mother and Guises dissimulated, and how the Riot of Amboise terminated.  This is not, however, the subject of the present narrative.  When in the morning everyone had quitted the chamber of the queen-mother, where everything had been arranged, Monseigneur Sardini, in no way oblivious of his love for the fair Avenelles, although he was at the time deeply smitten with the lovely Limeuil, a girl belonging to the queen-mother, and her relation by the house of La Tour de Turenne, asked why the good Judas had been caged.  Then the Cardinal of Lorraine told him his intention was not in any way to harm the rogue, but that fearing his repentance, and for greater security of his silence until the end of the affair, he put him out of the way, and would liberate him at the proper time.

“Liberate him!” said the Luccanese.  “Never!  Put him in a sack, and throw the old black gown into the Loire.  In the first place I know him; he is not the man to forgive you his imprisonment, and will return to the Protestant Church.  Thus this will be a work pleasant to God, to rid him of a heretic.  Then no one will know your secrets, and not one of his adherents will think of asking you what has become of him, because he is a traitor.  Let me procure the escape of his wife and arrange the rest; I will take it off your hands.”

“Ha, ha!” said the cardinal; “you give good council.  Now I will, before distilling your advice, have them both more securely guarded.  Hi, there!”

Came an officer of police, who was ordered to let no person whoever he might be, communicate with the two prisoners.  Then the cardinal begged Sardini to say at his hotel that the said advocate had departed from Blois to return to his causes in Paris.  The men charged with the arrest of the advocate had received a verbal order to treat him as a man of importance, so they neither stripped nor robbed him.  Now the advocate had kept thirty gold crowns in his purse, and resolved to lose them all to assure his vengeance, and proved by good arguments to the jailers that it