of the blood, a short time
before his death, warned his cousin of Conde of the impending danger.[424]
Conde, who, within the past few months, had repeatedly addressed the king
and his mother in terms of remonstrance and petition for the redress of
the oppression under which the Huguenots were suffering, but to no
purpose, again supplicated the throne, urging in particular that the levy
of the Swiss be countermanded, since, if they should come, there would be
little hope of the preservation of the peace;[425] while Admiral Coligny,
who found Catharine visiting the constable, his uncle, at his palace of
Chantilly, with faithful boldness exposed to them both the impossibility
of retaining the Protestants in quiet, when they saw plain indications
that formidable preparations were being made for the purpose of
overwhelming them. To these remonstrances, however, they received only
what they esteemed evasive answers--excuses for not dismissing the Swiss,
based upon representations of the danger of some Spanish incursion, and
promises that the just requests of the Huguenots should receive the
gracious attention of a monarch desirous of establishing his throne by
equity.[426]

"The queene returned answer by letters," wrote the English ambassador,
Norris, to Elizabeth, "assuringe him"--Conde--"by the faythe of a
princesse _et d'une femme de bien_ (for so she termed it), that so long as
she might any waies prevayle with the Kinge, her sonne, he should never
breake the sayd edicte, and therof required him to assure himselfe; and if
he coulde come to the courte, he shoulde be as welcome as his owne harte
could devise; if not, to passe the tyme without any suspect or jealousie,
protesting that there was nothing ment that tended to his indempnitie,
what so ever was bruted abrode or conceyved to the contrary, as he should
perceyve by the sequele erst it were long."[427]

Shall we blame those sturdy, straightforward men, so long fed upon
unmeaning or readily-broken promises of redress, if they gave little
credit to the royal assurances, and to the more honeyed words of the queen
mother? Perhaps there existed no sufficient grounds for the immediate
alarm of the Huguenots. Perhaps no settled plan had been formed with the
connivance of Philip--no "sacred league" of the kind supposed to have been
sketched in outline at Bayonne--no contemplated massacre of the chiefs,
with a subsequent assembly of notables at Poitiers, and repeal of all the