d the
chancellor had lost his characteristic courage and avowed his utter
despair of being able to stem the fierce tide of human selfishness and
passion. Cardinal Lorraine was realizing his long-cherished hope: "for
this one man's authority had been the greatest countermand of his
devices."[555]

[Sidenote: The court tries to ruin Conde and Coligny.]

The Huguenot leaders had entered into engagements to repay to the king the
nine hundred thousand francs advanced by him to the German reiters of
Count Casimir. This sum--a large one for the times--Charles now called
upon Conde and Coligny to refund, and he expressly commanded that it
should not be levied upon the Protestant churches, but be raised by those
who had taken up arms in the late contest.[556] It was a transparent
attempt to array the masses that had suffered little pecuniarily in the
war against the brave men who had not only impoverished themselves, but
hazarded their lives in defence of the common cause. Nothing less than the
financial ruin of the prince and the admiral, who had voluntarily become
sureties, seemed likely to satisfy their enemies.

[Sidenote: Teligny sent to carry a reply.]

The Prince of Conde despatched young Teligny to carry his spirited reply
to this extraordinary demand, and, not confining himself to the exhibition
of its flagrant injustice, he recapitulated the daily multiplying
infractions upon the edict. The Protestants were treated as enemies, he
said, and were safe neither at home nor abroad. An open war could not be
more bitter.[557] Besides countless general massacres, he complained of
the recent assassination of two of his own dependants, and of the
surveillance exercised over all the great noblemen "of the religion," who
were closely watched in their castles by the commanders of neighboring
forces. Against himself the unparalleled insult had been shown of placing
a garrison in the palace of a prince of the blood. Nay, he had arrested a
spy caught in the very act of measuring the height of the fortifications
of Noyers, and sounding the depth of the moat, with a view to a subsequent
assault, and the capture not only of the prince, but of the admiral, who
frequently came there to see him. He rehearsed the grounds of just alarm
which the Protestants had in the threats their indiscreet enemies were
daily uttering, and in "the confraternities of the Holy Ghost," defiantly
instituted with the approval of the king's own governors. What