The very day of their arrival Antoine de Navarre was consigned to a certain house in the city where he was kept continually in sight, and the Prince de Condé was cast into prison.
Then an extraordinary commission issued to try the prince; and he was condemned to death at Orléans by the procurement of the Guises,—the very man whose innocence the Duc de Guise himself at Amboise had announced his willingness to answer for with his sword.
Only one or two signatures were still to be procured, which the Chancellor l'Hôpital was delaying, before the sentence would be executed.
The foregoing statement will serve to show how matters stood on the evening of the 4th of December, as regards the party of the Guises, of which Le Balafré was the arm and the cardinal the head, and the Bourbon faction, of which Catherine de Médicis was the secret soul.
Everything depended, for both sides, upon the expiring breath of the anointed youth.
If François II. could only live a few days longer, the Prince de Condé would be executed, the King of Navarre might be accidentally slain in some altercation, and Catherine de Médicis banished to Florence. So far as the States-General were concerned, the Guises were masters, and if necessary, kings.
If, on the other hand, the young king should die before his uncles were relieved of their enemies, the struggle would begin again, with the chances against them rather than in their favor.
Therefore what Catherine de Médicis and Charles de Lorraine were waiting and watching for with such an anguish of interest on that cold night of the 4th of December, in that apartment in the city of Orléans, was not so much the life or death of their royal son and nephew as the triumph or defeat of their cause.
Mary Stuart alone watched over her young, dearly loved husband without thinking what loss his death might entail upon her.
However, we must not think that the bitter antagonism of the queen-mother and the cardinal betrayed itself to outside observers in their manners or their conversation. On the contrary, they had never seemed to be more confiding or more affectionate to each other.