_To face page 21._] The marriage of the Prince de Condé was an occasion for great rejoicing amongst the Protestant party, when all at once news arrived of the sudden death of Queen Jeanne d'Albret under suspicious circumstances. It was rumoured that Catherine de Medicis wished to remove her before the nuptials of her son Henri of Navarre and Margot de France. The _douce enfant_ (as Francis I called her, when Dauphine of France) had schooled herself well to the difficult position in which as a young wife she found herself with Diane de Poitiers; but as Queen-mother and Regent she developed into a false and ambitious woman, who actually planned the carnage of St. Bartholomew on the eve of her own daughter's marriage to the chief of the Huguenot party. It does not enter into our present work to describe the horrors for which she was responsible on that occasion, but it is sufficient to say that Gaspard de Coligny found his death, whilst the lives of Condé and of the King of Navarre were only spared on the condition that they abjured the Protestant Faith. Condé, however, at first persisted in a refusal, although his young wife obeyed. For this reason he was summoned before the boy King, Charles IX, who, advancing towards him, called out, "The Mass, Death, or the Bastille, Choose!" "God will not allow," said Condé quietly, "that I choose the first, my King! The two other alternatives are at your pleasure." In a fury, the King rushed upon him and would have slain him then and there, had not the Queen, Elizabeth of Austria--the only redeeming feature of this contemptible Court--thrown herself at the feet of her husband to prevent him. Finally, however, the two Bourbon Princes did attend Mass, and the Cardinal de Bourbon gave Condé and his bride the nuptial benediction in the church of St. Germain des Prés. But this was not enough; for both Navarre and Condé were forced to fight against those very Huguenots whose leaders they had been; and they were compelled to march under the command of the Duc d'Anjou against that same La Rochelle where Condé had passed so many years with his noble friend Gaspard de Coligny, engaged in furthering the Protestant cause. In 1574, however, upon the death of Charles IX, Condé and Henri of Navarre again joined the Protestant forces. Not so Marie de Clève, who was even trying to make this a plea for a separation when she died suddenly in giving birth to a daughter.[5] Twelve years later Condé contracted another marriage, with Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille.