“Out of so large an assemblage,” adds the historian, “there was not found to be one whom so delicate an enterprise caused to recoil, or who asked for time to deliberate. It was agreed that, before anything else, a large number of persons, without arms and free from suspicion, should repair to court and there present a petition to the king, beseeching him not to put pressure upon consciences any more, and to permit the free exercise of religion; that at almost the same time a chosen body of horsemen should repair to Blois, where the king was, that their accomplices should admit them into the town and present a new petition to the king against the Guises, and that, if these princes would not withdraw and give an account of their administration, they should be attacked sword in hand; and, lastly, that the Prince of Conde, who had wished his name to be kept secret up to that time, should put himself at the head of the conspirators. The 15th of June was the day fixed for the execution of it all.” But the Guises were warned; one of La Renaudie’s friends had revealed the conspiracy to the Cardinal of Lorraine’s secretary; and from Spain, Germany, and Italy they received information as to the conspiracy hatched against them. The cardinal, impetuous and pusillanimous too, was for calling out the troops at once; but his brother the duke, “who was not easily startled,” was opposed to anything demonstrative. They removed the king to the castle of Amboise, a safer place than the town of Blois; and they concerted measures with the queen-mother, to whom the conspirators were, both in their plans and their persons, almost as objectionable as to them. She wrote, in a style of affectionate confidence, to Coligny, begging him to come to Amboise and give her his advice. He arrived in company with his brother D’Andelot, and urged the queen-mother to grant the Reformers liberty of conscience and of worship, the only way to checkmate all the mischievous designs and to restore peace to the kingdom. Something of what he advised was done: a royal decree was published and carried up to the Parliament on the 15th of March, ordaining the abolition of every prosecution on account of religion, in respect of the past only, and under reservations which rendered the grace almost inappreciable. The Guises, on their side, wrote to the Constable de Montmorency to inform him of the conspiracy, “of which you will feel as great horror as we do,” and they signed, Your thoroughly best friends. The Prince of Conde himself, though informed about the discovery of the plot, repaired to Amboise without showing any signs of being disconcerted at the cold reception offered him by the Lorraine princes. The Duke of Guise, always bold, even in his precautions, “found an honorable means of making sure of him,” says Castelnau, “by giving him the guard at a gate of the town of Amboise,” where he had him under watch and ward himself. The lords and gentlemen