ring the heretic. And they would
have accomplished their design, had not Marshal Montmorency ridden in,
sword in hand, and resolved to hang the culprits that very day. "He would
assist the Huguenots," he is reported to have been in the habit of saying,
"because they were the weaker party."[356] On Monday, the eighth of
January, 1565, the Cardinal of Lorraine approached the city in full
ecclesiastical dress, with the intention of entering it.[357] He was
attended by his young nephew, the Duke of Guise, and by an escort of armed
men, whom Catharine had permitted him to retain in spite of the general
prohibition, because of the fears he undoubtedly felt for his personal
safety. As he neared Paris he was met by a messenger sent by the governor,
commanding him to bid his company lay down their arms, or to exhibit his
pretended authority. The cardinal, accustomed to domineer over even such
old noble families as the Montmorencies, would do neither, and attempted
to ride defiantly into the city. But the marshal was no respecter of
persons. With the troops at his command he met and dispersed the
cardinal's escort. Lorraine fled as for his life into a shop on the Rue
Saint Denis. Thence he was secretly conveyed to his own palace, and
shortly after he left the city in utter discomfiture, but breathing dire
threats against the marshal.[358] The latter, calling into Paris his
cousin the admiral, had no difficulty in maintaining order. Great was the
consternation of the populace, it is true, for the absurd report was
circulated that Coligny was come to plunder the city, and to seize the
Parliament House, the Cathedral, and the Bastile;[359] and even the first
president, De Thou, begged him, when he came to the parliament, to explain
the reasons of his obeying his cousin's summons, and to imitate the
prudence of Pompey the Great when he entered the city of Rome, where
Caesar's presence rendered a sedition imminent. The admiral, in reply,
gracefully acknowledged the honor which parliament had done him in
likening him to Pompey, whom he would gladly imitate, he said, because
Pompey was a patriot. Still he saw no appositeness in the comparison, "as
there was no Caesar in Paris."[360]

[Sidenote: The conference at Bayonne, June, 1565.]

Early in the month of June, 1565, Charles the Ninth and his court reached
the neighborhood of the city of Bayonne, where, on the very confines of
France and Spain, a meeting had been arranged between Catha