He wanted to be cautious. He wanted to make sure of what he had won.

‘My friends,’ he cried, ‘do not shout, Vive Guise! I thank you for this expression of your love for me. But now I ask you to shout Vive le Roi! No violence, my friends. Keep up your barricades. We must act with care, my friends. I would not see any of you lose his life for a little lack of caution. Will you wait for instructions from me?’

They roared their approval. He was their hero. His word was law. He had but to state his wishes.

He made them bring out their Swiss prisoners, who fell on their knees before him.

‘I know you for good Catholics, my friends,’ he said. ‘You are at liberty.’

He then freed the French guards; and he knew immediately that he had acted wisely in this. He was now the soldiers’ hero, for he had saved their lives; with tears streaming down their faces they promised that those lives should be dedicated to him.

The people fell on their knees, blessing him. Bloodshed was averted, they cried, by the wisest Prince in France. They loved him; they were his to command. They would follow him to death . . . or to Rheims.

For a short while danger had been averted. Guise wrote to the Governor of Lyons asking that men and arms be sent to Paris.

‘I have defeated the Swiss,’ he wrote, ‘and cut in pieces a part of the King’s Guard. I hold the Louvre invested so closely that I will render a good account of whatsoever is in it. This is so great a victory that it will be remembered for ever.’


* * *

Guise had taken over the Hôtel de Ville and the Arsenal. The tocsins were sounding in the streets. The spies of Spain were urging the immediate assassination of the King, the setting up of Guise in his place and the introduction of the Inquisition, which would result in an automatic suppression of Huguenots.

Guise’s sister, the Duchesse de Montpensier, marched through the streets at the head of a procession, urging people to rally to her brother. This energetic lady was already known throughout Paris as the Fury of the League; there was no restraining her. She had distributed pamphlets throughout the city; she had had a picture painted to represent Elizabeth of England torturing Catholics. She was urging people to revolution, to the assassination of the King and the crowning of her brother.

But Henry of Guise could not bring himself to that climax which must mean the killing of the King. lie could not share the emotional enthusiasm of his sister. He looked further ahead than she did. The title of King of France would not be so easily held as that of King of Paris, and in reaching for the first he might lose the second. Jesuits from the Sorbonne were congregating in the streets before the university declaring their determination to go to the Louvre and get Brother Henry. Guise knew that it would not be long before one of these fanatics—many of whom believed that the quickest way to achieve a martyr’s crown was to plunge a knife into the heart of an enemy of Rome—found his way to the King and killed him.

He could not count on an army of sufficient size to back him up. He must not forget that it would be folly to put too much trust in Spain. The English, if he found himself in a weak position, would be ready to move in against him. In the Netherlands his enemies would be waiting; and he knew that Philip was more likely to squander his men and money in that country than to help to the throne of France a man who he was unsure would prove a good vassal. Nor must he forget the armies of Navarre, not yet subdued; the brilliant victory over Joyeuse could not easily be forgotten.

If the King was assassinated now, the King of Paris would immediately become the King of France; and the King of Paris was not yet ready to assume that responsibility.

He had set a guard round the Louvre; he had declared that he would account for what was inside the palace; but he was careful to leave one exit unguarded. Let the King escape and, in escaping, postpone a situation with which the man who intended eventually to be King felt he could not yet adequately deal.

And so the gate to the Tuileries was left unguarded, and it did not take the King’s friends long to discover this.


* * *

Catherine talked urgently to her son.

‘It would be your greatest folly to leave Paris now. You must stay. I know it is very alarming, but if you went .you would show your fear. You would leave Paris completely in the hands of Guise. You should not admit defeat.’

The King paced up and down his apartments, pretending to consider her words. He looked at her sharply. ‘Mother,’ he said with a nervous laugh, ‘there have been times of late when I have wondered whether you have served me or . . . the baton of your old age.’

She laughed with something like her old abandon. ‘Then you have been a fool. Whom should I ever serve but you? If I have seemed to be over-friendly with that man, it was that I might win his confidence.’

‘It has been said that he fascinates you as he fascinates others.’

She blew with her lips as though to blow away in disgust that which was not worthy of consideration.

‘You are my life,’ she said. ‘If aught happened to you, I should no longer wish to live. You have allowed evil counsels to lead you to this. You have not watched the growing discontent of the people, and the people of France are not a patient and long-suffering people. They love and they hate; and they do these things in good measure. Your young men, my dear son, have not pleased the people.’

‘You are right, Mother. Ah, had I but listened to you! Go to Guise now, I beg of you. Plead with him. Tell him that I am inclined to accept his terms, and tell him he must control the people and take away those ridiculous barricades. Tell him he cannot keep his King a prisoner.’

She smiled. ‘That is wise. You must pretend to agree with these Leaguers. You must lull their suspicions, and then, when all is peaceful again, we shall decide what we must do.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you are wise. You are subtle. You are the great dissembler. My mother, I know you have learned the art of saying one thing and meaning another. Go now to Guise. See what you can do. Mother, you gave me my kingdom; you must keep it for me.’

She embraced him warmly. ‘Joyeuse is dead,’ she said. ‘Do not heed Epernon. Listen to your mother, who loves you, who has only your good at heart.’

‘Mother, I shall listen.’

She told him what she planned to say to Guise. She felt almost young. The reins were in her hands once more. Never mind if she had to travel over the most treacherous country she had yet encountered.

She went in her litter to the Hôtel de Guise.

As soon as she had left, he strolled quietly out to the unguarded gate, walking slowly as though deep in melancholy thought. A few friends were waiting for him with horses; he mounted and rode away; he did not stop until he had reached the top of Chaillot, then pulling up, he turned to his friends and smiled ruefully; but when he looked back at Paris there were tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, ungrateful city!’ he muttered. ‘I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not enter thy walls again but by the breach.’

Then he turned abruptly and rode on.


* * *

The crowned King had fled to Chartres, and Guise was the uncrowned King for a spell. The Château of Vincennes, with the Arsenal and the Bastille, were in his hands; he insisted on the election of a new town council and provost of traders; and all these were naturally composed of members of the League. He was still uncertain. He shrank from violence and ardently desired a bloodless coup. He therefore allowed royalists to leave the city for Chartres if they so desired; his enemies, considering this action and the fact that the King had been allowed to escape, detected a weakness in him He was now doing all in his power to restore calm, but the people’s blood was up, and they would not be satisfied without violence. Atrocities were being committed and Guise knew himself powerless to stop them. All Huguenots were turned out of office; and there were Leaguers in control of all the churches. They shouted from the pulpits: ‘France is sick and Paris has wealth enough to make war on four Kings. France needs a draught of French blood. Receive Henry of Valois back into your towns, and you will see your preachers massacred, your women violated, your friends hanging from the gibbets.’

The Guise family arrived in Paris. The Duke’s wife, who was pregnant, was greeted as though she were the Queen of France, and all her children the heirs of a royal house. The Duke of Elboeuf came with her, as did their staunch ally, the Cardinal of Bourbon.

Catherine, closely watching events, had insidiously slid to the side of Guise. It was with her help that he formed a new government. She knew that her effort to have her grandson recognized as heir to the throne had failed; but while she feigned to work with Guise she was plotting secretly to depose him and put the King back in his place.

Epernon had escaped from Paris, but only with his life; he had tried to take his treasures with him on mules laden with those priceless gifts he had amassed during the years when he had enjoyed the King’s favour; but the mules had been stopped and searched; so Epernon lost his treasure.

Never had Catherine worked harder than she did now; never had she displayed her craft to better advantage. She understood that Guise had deliberately made it possible for the King to escape, and although she deplored her son’s action of running away, she construed Guise’s conduct as weakness, for hesitation was the most fatal weakness a man could display at such a time. He was a great man, this Guise; she had always recognized that quality in him; he had ambition and courage; but he had failed to take an opportunity which could have put him immediately on the throne; he had hesitated at a crucial moment; he had been unsure. She, like the Parisians, had thought at one time that he was a god among men; but he was no god; he was human; he had a weakness, and his greatest folly was in showing that weakness to her. She knew her man now, and she would be equal to him.