Now the Duke of Guise had found a way to turn these circumstances to account. Since the King of France could not hold down the Huguenots, the Holy Catholic League, composed of Catholics of every class throughout the most of France, would undertake the task. He foresaw that he, as leader of the League, would earn from the Catholics a gratitude that would make him the most powerful man in the kingdom. Catherine, too, saw this. To neutralize this move, she caused the King to endorse the League and appoint himself its head. The Huguenots must not take this as a step against them; on the contrary, they must be led to regard it as a shrewd measure to restrain the League. The King's first official edicts, after assuming the leadership of the League, seemed to warrant this view. So the King, in a final struggle against the Guise elements, might still rely on the aid of the Huguenots. But the King still remained outside of the League, although nominally its chief. Catherine saw that it was not to be deluded from its real purpose. The only thing to do was to conciliate the Duke of Guise into waiting. There was little likelihood of either of her sons attaining middle age. The Duke of Guise, a splendid specimen of physical manhood, would doubtless outlive them; he might be induced to wait for their deaths. The rightful successor to the throne would then be Henri of Navarre, head of the Bourbon family. But he was a Huguenot; therefore Catherine affected to the Duke of Guise a great desire that he should succeed her sons. The existing peace allowed the Duke of Guise the leisure in which to be dangerous; so every means to keep him quiet was taken. Some of these things De Rilly told me, as we stood in the embrasure of a window in the gallery, while Catherine visited her son, Anjou,--whose discontent at court complicated the situation, for he might, at any time, leave Paris and lead the Huguenots and malcontents in a rebellion which would further discredit her family with the people, demonstrate anew the King's incompetence, and give the League an opportunity. "And does the Duke of Guise allow himself to be cajoled?" I asked De Rilly. "Who knows? He is a cautious man, anxious to make no false step. They say he would be willing to wait for the death of the King, but that he is ever being urged to immediate action by De Noyard." "De Noyard?" "One of Guise's followers; an obscure gentleman of very great virtue, who has recently become Guise's most valued counsellor. He keeps Guise on his guard against Catherine's wiles, they say, and discourages Guise's amour with her daughter, Marguerite, which Catherine has an interest in maintaining. Nobody is more _de trop_ to Catherine just at present, I hear, than this same Philippe de Noyard. Ah! there he is now,--in the courtyard, the tallest of the gentlemen who have just dismounted, and are coming in this direction, with the Duke of Guise."