omise of Philip's support. Neither
Margaret nor Chantonnay, however, could fulfil the monarch's desires.
The former thought that Philip had thrown away the golden opportunity by
failing to interfere while the question of Catharine's and Navarre's
claims to the administration was in dispute, and when the number of
sectaries was much smaller than at present; and by the time Courteville
reached Poissy, where Chantonnay was stopping, the assembled nobles had
dispersed to their homes, and the Guises were practically farther from
Paris than from Brussels. So the execution of Philip's plan, both
agreed, must be deferred for some time.[1242]

[Sidenote: The ill-starred Medici family.]

[Sidenote: The Venetian envoy's lugubrious account of France.]

It could not be denied that the situation was critical in the extreme.
Long-headed diplomatists of the conservative school shook their heads
ominously. They hinted that there might be only too much truth in the
current Catholic saying that the Medici family was destined to be fatal
to Christendom. Under Leo the Tenth Germany was lost to the papacy,
under Clement the Eighth England had apostatized, and now under Pius the
Fourth, a third Pope of the same ill-starred race, France was on the
brink of ruin. The king was a boy, without experience and without
authority, the council full of discord, the supreme power in the hands
of the queen, who, though sagacious, was yet only a woman, and both
timid and irresolute. The King of Navarre, while noble and gracious, was
a prince of little constancy and limited practice in government. The
people were in disorder and manifest division. Everywhere there were
seditious and insolent men, who, under the pretext of religion, had
disturbed the general peace, overturned customs and discipline, and put
in doubt the royal authority and the safety of all. Oh, that Philip the
Second had the courage of his father, or that Charles the Fifth had had
his son's glorious opportunity--_then would France be France no
longer_![1243] For just so certainly as the Spanish king was looked upon
with suspicion by the rulers, was he longed for by all that hated the
present state of things, and, most of all, by the prelates and the rest
of the Catholics, who knew not in what other quarter to look for
salvation.[1244]

[Sidenote: Romish complaints of Huguenot boldness.]

It was not possible that peace should long be maintained under such
circumstances. It could not be