farce; but the tragedy was yet to come.

[Sidenote: A second failure.]

[Sidenote: Alencon and Navarre examined.]

A second attempt at flight made by Alencon and Navarre also failed,
through the treachery of one of those to whom the secret had been
confided. Alencon and Navarre were now placed under close guard, and
subjected to long and repeated examinations before a royal commission.
Alencon was sufficiently craven in his bearing, and did not hesitate by
his admissions to involve in ruin the minor instruments in the execution
of the plan. Navarre, in his answers to the interrogatories, displayed a
courageous frankness. He was not, in truth, content with a simple denial
of the evil designs attributed to him. On the contrary, he availed himself
of the opportunity to rehearse the grievances under which he had been
suffering for nearly two years. Detained at court only to find himself an
object of suspicion, his ears had been filled with successive rumors of an
approaching massacre, a second St. Bartholomew's Day, when he would not be
spared in the general destruction. These rumors had, indeed, been declared
false by the Duke of Anjou, before the walls of La Rochelle, but that
prince had failed to keep the promises made before his departure for
Poland--to commend Navarre to the royal favor. Consequently he had been
subjected to the indignity of frequently being refused admission to the
presence of Charles, while seeing La Chastre, and others of those who had
figured most prominently among the actors in the Parisian matins, freely
received at the king's rising. He had at length resolved to leave the
court in company with his cousin of Alencon, partly in order to consult
his own safety, partly that he might restore order in his estates of Bearn
and Navarre, now suffering from his protracted absence. When his design
had come to the queen mother's knowledge, he had explained the motives of
his action to her, and obtained the promise of her protection.
Subsequently there had reached him the intelligence that he was to be
imprisoned with Alencon in the castle of Vincennes; whereupon he had
renewed the attempt to escape the impending peril. In his second
examination, in the presence of Catharine de' Medici and his uncle,
Cardinal Bourbon, Henry reiterated his statements respecting the alarming
reports that continually reached him. At one time he learned that it was
decided that, should Margaret of Navarre bear a son, the luckl