Henry M. Baird · 199 of 379

CHAPTER IX · Confidence of the Guises.

The plan was well devised, and its execution was entrusted to capable hands. The omens, indeed, were favorable. The Cardinal of Lorraine and his brother, intoxicated by the uniform success hitherto attending their ambitious projects, despised such vague rumors of opposition as reached their ears. The party adverse to their tyranny, composed not only of Protestants and others who sought the best interests of their country, but recruited from the ranks of the restless and of those who had private wrongs to redress, was sure, on the first tidings of its uprising, to secure the active co-operation of many of the most powerful nobles, and possibly might enlist the majority of the population. Rarely has an important secret been so long and so successfully kept. It was deemed little short of a miracle that, in a time of peace, and in a country where the regal authority was so implicitly obeyed, a deliberative assembly of no mean size had been convened from all the provinces of France, and the Guises had obtained intimations of the conspiracy of their enemies by letters from Germany, Spain, and Italy, before any tidings of it reached the ears of their spies carefully posted in every part of the kingdom. So close a reticence augured ill for the permanence of the present usurpation.