houses done by the Huguenots in
this last war. They suppress the losses and hurts the Huguenots have
suffered."[338] On the other hand, the Roman Catholic party received their
success as a presage of speedy restoration to full power, and entertained
brilliant hopes for the future.[339] The queen mother was beginning to
make fair promises to the papal adherents, and the influence of the
admiral and his brothers seemed to be at an end.

Leaving the palace of Fontainebleau, the court passed through Sens and
Troyes to the city of Bar-sur-Seine, where Charles acted as sponsor for
his infant nephew, the son of the Duke of Lorraine. The brilliant _fetes_
that accompanied the arrival of the king here and elsewhere could not,
however, hide from the world one of the chief results, if not designs, of
the journey. It was a prominent part of the queen mother's plan to seize
the opportunity for carrying out the system of repression toward the
Huguenots which she had already begun. While there is no reason to suppose
that as yet she felt any disposition to lend an ear to the suggestions of
Spanish emissaries, or of Philip himself, for a general massacre, or at
least an open war of extermination, she was certainly very willing by less
open means to preclude the Protestants from ever giving her trouble, or
becoming again a formidable power in the state. The most unfavorable
reports, in truth, were in circulation against the Huguenots. At Lyons
they were accused of poisoning the wells, or, according to another version
of the story, the kitchen-pots, in order to give the impression that the
plague was in the city, and so deter the king from coming.[340] Catharine
had no need, however, of crediting these calumnious tales in order to be
moved to hostile action. Her desire was unabated to reign under her son's
name, untrammelled by the restraint of the jealous love of liberty
cherished by the Huguenots. Their numbers were large--though not so large
as they were then supposed to be. Even so intelligent a historian as
Garnier regards them as constituting nearly one-third of the kingdom.[341]
M. Lacretelle is undoubtedly much more correct in estimating them at
fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand souls, or barely one-tenth of the
entire population of France--a country at that time much more sparsely
inhabited, and of which a much larger part of the surface was in inferior
cultivation, or altogether neglected, than at present.[342] But, however
s