danger. An attempt to poison him was
frustrated by its timely revelation; a plot to assassinate him on
leaving the king's residence, by the strength of his body-guard. A still
more atrocious scheme was concocted. Francis was to stab his cousin of
Navarre with his dagger, leaving his attendants to despatch him with
their swords. Such murderous projects can rarely be kept secret. Even
Catharine de' Medici is said to have attempted to dissuade Antoine from
going to the palace by warning him of the danger he would incur. At the
door of the king's chamber a friendly hand interposed, and a friendly
voice asked: "Sire, whither are you going to your ruin?" But the prince,
with a resolution which it had been well had he manifested at an earlier
period, paused only a moment to say to his faithful Renty: "I am going
to the spot where a conspiracy has been entered into to take my life....
If it please God, He will save me; but, if I die, I entreat you, by the
fidelity I have ever known in you, ... to carry the shirt I wear, all
covered with blood, to my wife and son, and to conjure my wife, by the
great love she has always borne me, and by her duty (since my son is
not yet old enough to avenge my death), to send it, torn by the dagger,
and bloody, to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge
my death, so cruel and treacherous."[954] These gloomy forebodings were
not destined to be realized. Francis's anger evaporated in words, or was
restrained by his mother's secret injunctions,[955] and Antoine of
Navarre was suffered to go away unharmed. The duke and cardinal, who
witnessed the scene from the recess of a window, are said to have
muttered half audibly as they left the room, "That is the most cowardly
heart that ever was!"[956]

[Sidenote: A plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots.]

The assassination of the King of Navarre was, however, but a part of a
larger plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots and of
Protestantism in France, the details of which are but imperfectly
known.[957] It is alleged that preliminary lists of those infected by
heresy had been obtained from all parts of France, and that a more exact
knowledge was to be obtained by compelling all classes--from the
nobility and members of the Order of St. Michael down to the simple
citizen--to subscribe to the articles of faith drawn up eighteen years
before by the Sorbonne.[958] At the close of the sessions of the States
General, the ful