t was merely their object to induce the
foreign troops who had come to the aid of the allies to leave the
kingdom, that they might then exterminate the Protestants by a general
massacre. Catharine decided to accomplish by the dagger of the
assassin that which she had in vain attempted to accomplish on the
field of battle. This peace was but the first act in the awful tragedy
of St. Bartholomew.

Peace being thus apparently restored, the young Prince of Navarre now
returned to his hereditary domains and visited its various provinces,
where he was received with the most lively demonstrations of
affection. Various circumstances, however, indicated to the Protestant
leaders that some mysterious and treacherous plot was forming for
their destruction. The Protestant gentlemen absented themselves,
consequently, from the court of Charles IX. The king and his mother
were mortified by these evidences that their perfidy was suspected.

Jeanne, with her son, after visiting her subjects in all parts of her
own dominions, went to Rochelle, where they were joined by many of the
most illustrious of their friends. Large numbers gathered around them,
and the court of the Queen of Navarre was virtually transferred to
that place. Thus there were two rival courts, side by side, in the
same kingdom. Catharine, with her courtiers, exhibited boundless
luxury and voluptuousness at Paris. Jeanne d'Albret, at Rochelle,
embellished her court with all that was noble in intellect, elegant in
manners, and pure in morals. Catharine and her submissive son Charles
IX. left nothing untried to lure the Protestants into a false
security. Jeanne scrupulously requited the courtesies she received
from Catharine, though she regarded with much suspicion the adulation
and the sycophancy of her proud hostess.

The young King of France, Charles IX., who was of about the same age
with Henry, and who had been his companion and playmate in childhood,
was now married to Elizabeth, the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian
II. of Austria. Their nuptials were celebrated with all the
ostentatious pomp which the luxury of the times and the opulence of
the French monarchy could furnish. In these rejoicings the courts of
France and Navarre participated with the semblance of the most
heartfelt cordiality. Protestants and Catholics, pretending to forget
that they had recently encountered each other with fiendlike fury in
fields of blood, mingled gayly in these festivities, an