The shopwindows were filled with coloured engravings, representing, in exaggerated fashion, the sufferings of the English Catholics under bloody Elizabeth, or Jezebel, as she was called; and as the gaping burghers stopped to ponder over these works of art, there were ever present, as if by accident, some persons of superior information who would condescendingly explain the various pictures, pointing out with a long stick the phenomena most worthy of notice.  These caricatures proving highly successful, and being suppressed by order of government, they were repeated upon canvas on a larger scale, in still more conspicuous situations, as if in contempt of the royal authority, which sullied itself by compromise with Calvinism!  The pulpits, meanwhile, thundered denunciations on the one hand against the weak and wicked King, who worshipped idols, and who sacrificed the dearly-earned pittance of his subjects to feed the insolent pomp of his pampered favourites; and on the other, upon the arch-heretic, the arch-apostate, the Bearnese Huguenot, who, after the death of the reigning monarch, would have the effrontery to claim his throne, and to introduce into France the persecutions and the horrors under which unhappy England was already groaning.

The scarce-concealed instigator of these assaults upon the royal and upon the Huguenot faction was, of course, the Duke of Guise,—­the man whose most signal achievement had been the Massacre of St. Bartholomew—­all the preliminary details of that transaction having been arranged by his skill.  So long as Charles ix. was living, the Balafre had created the confusion which was his element, by entertaining and fomenting the perpetual intrigues of Anjou and Alencon against their brother; while the altercations between them and the Queen Mother and the furious madman who then sat upon the throne, had been the cause of sufficient disorder and calamity for France.  On the death of Charles ix.  Guise had sought the intimacy of Henry of Navarre, that by his means he might frustrate the hopes of Alencon for the succession.  During the early period of the Bearnese’s residence at the French court the two had been inseparable, living together, going to the same festivals, tournaments, and masquerades, and even sleeping in the same bed.  “My master,” was ever Guise’s address to Henry; “my gossip,” the young King of Navarre’s reply.  But the crafty Bearnese had made use of the intimacy only to read the secrets of the Balafre’s heart; and on Navarre’s flight from the court, and his return to Huguenotism, Guise knew that he had been played upon by a subtler spirit than his own.  The simulated affection was now changed into undisguised hatred.  Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now stood next the throne, and Guise’s plots became still more extensive and more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the childless Henry iii. became more fervid.