269 Death of La Renaudie 283 After-dinner Diversions 284 Mary Stuart 284 Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condo 285 Coligny at the Death-bed of Francis II.

Under the persecution of the Valois princes they had Condé and the King of Navarre and Coligny for leaders; they were strong enough to fight for their liberties,they had enthusiasm and prestige and hope.

She was received in France with the respect due to her; and when, five months after the marriage, Charles; IX. summoned Coligny to Paris, "to serve him in his most important affairs, as a worthy minister, whose virtues were sufficiently known and tried," he sent at the same time to Madame l'Amirale a safe-conduct in which he called her my fair cousin.

This tone of freedom and confidence had inspired Coligny with reciprocal confidence; he believed himself to have a decisive influence over the king's ideas and conduct; and when the Protestants testified their distrust upon this subject, he reproached them vehemently for it; he affirmed the king's good intentions and sincerity; and he considered himself in fact, said Catherine de' Medici with temper, "a second king of France.

" After her departure, a body of German horse, commanded by Count Mansfeld, joined Coligny in the neighborhood of Limoges.

He first of all sent Marshal de Cosse to La Rochelle, to sound Coligny as to his feelings upon this subject, and to urge him to thus cut short public woes and the Reformers' grievances.

Far more than that, the Parliament of Paris had accepted the royal lie which accused Coligny of conspiring for the downfall of the king and the royal house; a decree, on that very ground, sentenced to condemnation the memory, the family, and the property of Coligny, with all sorts of rigorous, we should rather say atrocious, circumstances.