tou, and the
coasts offered six or seven thousand foot soldiers, already enrolled
under captains, and prepared to defend him against present attack.
Provence and Languedoc would march to his assistance with three or four
thousand horse and foot. Normandy would raise as many more. He would at
once become so formidable that, without a blow, he could assume the
guardianship of the king. Bourges and Orleans would fall into his hands,
and the States General be held free of constraint. The very forces of
the enemy would desert the sinking cause of the hated Guises. As for the
necessary funds, with the best filled purses in France at his command,
he could scarcely feel any lack. The suggestions of the Huguenot lords,
backed by the entreaties of Beza, were, however, overborne by the
secret insinuations of his treacherous counsellors. At Verteuil--a few
leagues beyond--Navarre clearly announced his intentions, and dismissed
his numerous friends with hearty thanks for their kind attentions. He
would ask the king's pardon for those who had accompanied him thus far
in arms. "Pardon!" replied one of the gentlemen, "think only of very
humbly asking it for yourself, who are going to give yourself up as a
prisoner with the halter around your neck. So far as I can see, you have
more need of it than we have, who have determined not to sell our lives
at so cheap a rate, but to die fighting rather than submit to the mercy
of those detested enemies of the king. And since we are miserably
forsaken by our leaders, we hope that God will raise up others to free
us from the oppression of these tyrants."[932] This retort proving
futile, as did also the warning of the Princess of Conde, who wrote and
sent a messenger to her husband to escape from the toils of his enemies
while it was still possible, the Huguenot gentry retired in disgust; and
Beza seized the first opportunity (on the seventeenth of October) to
steal away from the King of Navarre, and undertake his perilous return
to Geneva, which he succeeded in reaching after a series of hair-breadth
escapes.[933]

[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Bourbons.]

The King of Navarre had disregarded the counsels of Calvin and other
prudent advisers, who believed that, if he presented himself with a
powerful escort at the gates of Orleans, the Guises would yield without
a blow.[934] Antoine felt confident that his enemies would never venture
to lay hands on a prince of the royal blood. His blind infatuat