Henry M. Baird · 286 of 379

CHAPTER XI · Constable Montmorency's disgust.

In the court at Fontainebleau the contagion daily spread. Beza, it is true, gave expression to the warning that "not to be a Papist and to be a Christian were different things." But of external marks of an altered condition of things there was no lack. Little account was taken of the arrival of Lent. Meat was openly sold and eaten. Huguenot preachers conducted their services publicly in the apartments of the Prince of Condé and of Admiral Coligny, first outside of the castle, and then within its precincts. Catharine herself, partaking of the general zeal, declared her intention to hear the Bishop of Valence preach before the young king and the court, in the saloon of the castle. Such was the news that irritated and alarmed the aged, but still vigorous Anne of Montmorency. By birth, by tradition, by long association, the constable was a devoted Roman Catholic. If any motive were wanting to determine him to cling to the ancient régime, it was afforded by the proposition made in the late Particular Estates of Paris that the favorites of the last two monarchs should be required to disgorge the enormous gifts that had helped to impoverish the nation. This project, for which he held the Huguenots responsible, was repugnant alike to his pride and to his exorbitant avarice. His prejudices were, moreover, skilfully fanned into a flame by interested companions. His wife, Madeleine de Savoie—partly from conviction, partly through jealousy of his children by a former marriage—her brother, the Count of Villars, and the Marshal of St. André—a crafty, insidious adviser—plied him with plausible arguments. Diana, the Duchess of Valentinois, solicited him by daily messages. How could the first Christian baron abandon the ancient faith? How could the favorite of Henry the Second consent to let his rich acquisitions escape him?