“Obey blindly, my dear friend; otherwise you will get your mind bewildered.”

“He is right,” thought the furrier.  “I had better not know more”; and he went at once in search of the king’s surgeon, who lived at a hostelry in the place du Martroi.

Catherine de’ Medici was at this moment in a political extremity very much like that in which poor Christophe had seen her at Blois.  Though she had been in a way trained by the struggle, though she had exercised her lofty intellect by the lessons of that first defeat, her present situation, while nearly the same, had become more critical, more perilous than it was at Amboise.  Events, like the woman herself, had magnified.  Though she seemed to be in full accordance with the Guises, Catherine held in her hand the threads of a wisely planned conspiracy against her terrible associates, and was only awaiting a propitious moment to throw off the mask.  The cardinal had just obtained the positive certainty that Catherine was deceiving him.  Her subtle Italian spirit felt that the Younger branch was the best hindrance she could offer to the ambition of the duke and the cardinal; and (in spite of the advice of the two Gondis, who urged her to let the Guises wreak their vengeance on the Bourbons) she defeated the scheme concocted by them with Spain to seize the province of Bearn, by warning Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, of that threatened danger.  As this state secret was known only to them and to the queen-mother, the Guises knew of course who had betrayed it, and resolved to send her back to Florence.  But in order to make themselves perfectly sure of what they called her treason against the State (the State being the house of Lorraine), the duke and cardinal confided to her their intention of getting rid of the king of Navarre.  The precautions instantly taken by Antoine proved conclusively to the two brothers that the secrets known only to them and the queen-mother had been divulged by the latter.  The cardinal instantly taxed her with treachery, in presence of Francois II.,—­threatening her with an edict of banishment in case of future indiscretion, which might, as they said, put the kingdom in danger.

Catherine, who then felt herself in the utmost peril, acted in the spirit of a great king, giving proof of her high capacity.  It must be added, however, that she was ably seconded by her friends.  L’Hopital managed to send her a note, written in the following terms:—­

  “Do not allow a prince of the blood to be put to death by a
  committee; or you will yourself be carried off in some way.”