Christophe was therefore kept in the strictest solitary confinement by order of the cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of the Prince de Conde.  The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince’s secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently plain proof for judges.  The cardinal intended to confront the prince and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison yard.  Each time that Christophe was brought before the magistrates, and subjected to a close examination, he sheltered himself behind a total and complete denial, which prolonged his trial until after the opening of the States-general.

Old Lecamus, who by that time had got himself elected deputy of the tiers-etat by the burghers of Paris, arrived at Orleans a few days after the arrest of the Prince de Conde.  This news, which reached him at Etampes, redoubled his anxiety; for he fully understood—­he, who alone knew of Christophe’s interview with the prince under the bridge near his own house—­that his son’s fate was closely bound up with that of the leader of the Reformed party.  He therefore determined to study the dark tangle of interests which were struggling together at court in order to discover some means of rescuing his son.  It was useless to think of Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier.  No one about the court whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory information about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such utter despair that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal himself, when he learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great stain upon that good man’s life) had consented to be one of the judges of the Prince de Conde.  The old furrier went at once to see him, and learned at last that Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.

Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the States-general.  The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself, secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades of religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God without caring what insignia men give to Him.  The poor old man, repulsed in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the streets.  Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing; Monsieur de Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the house of Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and cardinal allowed nothing that related to Christophe to transpire.  De Thou, whose fame is somewhat tarnished by the part he played