st he shall
not be able to trouble it at this time. I am myself a papist; but if the
Pope and his ministers go about again to disturb the kingdom, _my sword
shall be Huguenot_. My nephew shall leave neither cap nor dignity which he
has for the Pope, seeing the edict gives him that liberty."[401]

[Sidenote: The court at Moulins.]

Early in the following year, Charles the Ninth convoked in the city of
Moulins, in Bourbonnais, near the centre of France, an assembly of
notables to deliberate on the interests of the kingdom, which had not yet
fully recovered from the desolations of the first civil war. The extensive
journey, which had occupied a large part of the two preceding years, had
furnished him abundant evidence of the grievances under which his subjects
in the various provinces were laboring, and he now summoned all that was
most illustrious in France, and especially those noblemen whom he had
dismissed to their governments when about to start from his capital, to
assist him in discovering the best mode of relief. If the Florentine
Adriani could be credited, there were other and sinister designs in the
mind of the court, or, at least, in that of Catharine. According to this
historian, the plan of the second "Sicilian Vespers," resolved upon at
Bayonne, was to have been put into execution at Moulins, which, from its
strength, was well suited for the scene of so sanguinary a drama; but,
although the Huguenot chiefs assembled in numbers, their actions betrayed
so much suspicion of the Roman Catholics, and it seemed so difficult to
include all in the blow, that the massacre was deferred until the arrival
of a more propitious time, which did not come until St. Bartholomew's Day,
1572.[402] I need not stop to refute a story which presupposes the
adoption of resolutions in the conference of Bayonne, which we now know,
from documentary evidence, were never for a moment entertained by
Catharine and her son the king.

[Sidenote: Feigned reconciliation of the Guises and Coligny.]

So far from having any such treacherous design, in point of fact the
assembly of Moulins was intended in no small degree to serve as a means of
healing the dissensions existing among the nobles. The most serious
breaches were the feud between the Chatillons and the Guises on account of
the suspected complicity of Admiral Coligny in the murder of the late
duke, and that between Marshal Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine,
arising out of the af