“If they had been supported by the attack which Captain Chaudieu, the preacher’s brother, was expected to make before the gate of the Bon-Hommes, they would have been completely successful,” replied the Duc de Nemours. “But in consequence of the position which the Duc de Guise ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my flank to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest, this rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king’s troops had crushed the invaders of the town.”
“And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened to them?” said the prince.
“Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred men-at-arms.”
The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.
“The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the Reformers, to have acted as he did,” he said in conclusion. “They were no doubt betrayed.”
The prince was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments of the king.
“We are directed by his Majesty, monseigneur, to take you to your own apartments,” they said.
“Am I, then, a prisoner?”
“If that were the king’s intention you would not be accompanied by a prince of the Church, nor by me,” replied the chancellor.
These two personages escorted the prince to an apartment, where guards of honor—so-called—were given him. There he remained, without seeing any one, for some hours. From his window he looked down upon the Loire and the meadows of the beautiful valley stretching from Amboise to Tours. He was reflecting on the situation, and asking himself whether the Guises would really dare anything against his person, when the door of his chamber opened and Chicot, the king’s fool, formerly a dependent of his own, entered the room.