But, to return now to the moment of which we are writing, Catherine had, by this time, struck so many blows on the heart of her son that he was eagerly desirous of casting off her yoke.  During the absence of Marie Touchet, Charles IX., deprived of his usual occupation, had taken to observing everything about him.  He cleverly set traps for the persons in whom he trusted most, in order to test their fidelity.  He spied on his mother’s actions, concealing from her all knowledge of his own, employing for this deception the evil qualities she had fostered in him.  Consumed by a desire to blot out the horror excited in France by the Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in public affairs; he presided at the Council, and tried to seize the reins of government by well-laid schemes.  Though the queen-mother endeavored to check these attempts of her son by employing all the means of influence over his mind which her maternal authority and a long habit of domineering gave her, his rush into distrust was so vehement that he went too far at the first bound ever to return from it.  The day on which his mother’s speech to the king of Poland was reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his failing health, conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such thoughts take possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can remove them.  In fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided his wife and daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his guard against Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring to silence him, “Do not say that, monsieur!”

Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her sons anything but “Monsieur,” the queen-mother had detected in her son’s manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of vengeance.  But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking Catherine unawares.  She held ready in her hand at this moment the conspiracy of the Duke d’Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract, by another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making toward emancipation.  But, before employing this means, she wanted to remove his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him?  She felt herself at this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action.  She took counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present crisis.