upon overture to be made to the king, cannot be content to join with him
in assistance of this poor prince." And the faithful ambassador did not
forget to remind his mistress that the success of Philip in Flanders was
still more dangerous for Elizabeth than for Charles.[910]

[Sidenote: The admiral retains his courage.]

Meantime, Admiral Coligny, although disappointed at the rout of the
vanguard of the expedition which was to have been fitted out for the
liberation of the Netherlands, and yet more at the coolness which it had
occasioned among those who up to this moment had been not unfriendly, did
not yield to despondency, but labored all the more strenuously to engage
Charles in an undertaking fitted to call forth the nobler faculties of his
soul, and to free him from the thraldom under narrow-minded and interested
counsellors to which he had been subject all his life long. Even before
Genlis's defeat (in June, 1572), the admiral had presented an extended
paper, wherein the justice and the fair prospects of the war had been set
forth with rare force and cogency.[911] It may be that now, under the
influence of a sincere and unselfish devotion that took no account of
personal risks, the admiral distinctly told his young master that he could
never be a king in the true sense until he should emancipate himself from
his mother's control, and until he should find, outside of France, some
occupation for his brother Henry of Anjou, such as the vacancy of the
Polish throne seemed to offer.[912] Such frankness would have been
patriotic and timely, although a politician, influenced only by a regard
for his own safety, would have regarded it as foolhardy in the extreme.

[Sidenote: Charles and Catharine at Montpipeau.]

This advice, promptly and faithfully reported to Catharine by the spies
she kept around the king's person,[913] was the last drop in the cup of
Coligny's offences. Charles, at the time of her discovery of this fact,
was absent from court, seeking a few days' recreation at Montpipeau.
Thither his mother, now really alarmed for the continuance of her
influence, pursued him in precipitate haste.[914] Shutting herself up with
him apart from his followers, she burst into tears and plied Charles with
an artful harangue. For this woman, who had a masculine will and a heart
as cold and devoid of pity as the most utter scepticism could make it, had
the ability to counterfeit the feminine tenderness which she did not
pos