his Memoires, "that M. de Guise should kill the admiral
during a tilt-at-the-ring which the king gave in the garden of the
Louvre, and in which all Messieurs were to lead sides. I was on that of
the duke, who was believed to have an understanding with the admiral. On
this occasion, it was so managed that our dresses were not ready, and the
late duke and his side did not tilt at all. The resolution against the
admiral was changed prudently; inasmuch as it was very perilous, for the
person of the king and of Messieurs, to have determined to kill him in
that place, there being present more than four hundred gentlemen of the
religion, who might have gone very far in case of an assault upon that
lord, who was so much beloved by them." Everything considered, it was
thought more expedient to employ for the purpose an inferior agent;
Catherine and the Duke of Anjou sent for a Gascon captain, a dependant of
the house of Lorraine, whom they knew to be resolute and devoted.
"We had him shown the means he should adopt," says the Duke of Anjou,
"in attacking him whom we had in our eye; but, having well scanned him,
himself and his movements, and his speech and his looks, which had made
us laugh and afforded us good pastime, we considered him too hare-brained
and too much of a wind-bag to deal the blow well." They then applied to
an officer "of practice and experience in murder," Charles de Louviers,
Sieur de Maurevert, who was called the king's slaughterman (_le tueur du
roi_), because he had already rendered such a service, and they agreed
with him as to all the circumstances of place, time, and procedure most
likely to secure the success of the deed, whilst giving the murderer
chances of escape.

In such situations there is scarcely any project the secret of which is
so well kept that there does not get abroad some rumor to warn an
observant mind; and when it is the fate of a religious or a popular hero
that is in question, there is never any want of devoted friends or
servants about him, ready to take alarm for him. When Coligny mounted
his horse to go from Chatillon to Paris, a poor countrywoman on his
estates threw herself before him, sobbing, "Ah! sir, ah! our good master,
you are going to destruction; I shall never see you again if once you go
to Paris; you will die there, you and all those who go with-you." At
Paris, on the approach of the St. Bartholomew, the admiral heard that
some of his gentlemen were going away.