A first conference was held on the 2nd of June, at Thoury, in Beauce. It was agreed that each party should meet, with an equal escort of gentlemen, who should keep aloof, at a distance of eight hundred paces from each other. But whilst the chiefs debated, the gentlemen drew near together; in fact, they yearned towards each other. On a sudden, old friendships rekindled; party quarrels were forgotten; there were no longer Papists and Huguenots, but mingling embraces and tears; they only remembered that they had spent their childhood together, had drunk out of the same cup, and slept under the same roof. Sacred instinct of the heart! It inspired better emotions than the science of theologians, or the politics of statesmen! The queen-mother had conceived, with the bishop Montluc, her private counsellor, a strange expedient. It was to engage the chiefs of the two parties to impose on themselves a voluntary exile. The triumvirs were to withdraw from the court; the prince of Condé, the admiral, and the principal Calvinists, were to leave the kingdom until the majority of Charles IX., that the religious differences might be peaceably arranged. Such an idea was but a court stratagem, which could settle nothing. Much time had been lost. The Calvinist gentlemen, who had to maintain themselves at their own expense, were beginning to return home, and the army of the triumvirs was increasing. This was perceived by the increase of persecution. The Parliament of Paris passed a decree, at the end of June, commanding heretics to be set upon, and to be killed, wherever they should be met, like madmen, who were enemies of God and man. Every Sunday the curates were to read this dreadful decree from the pulpit. The peasants, the workmen, armed themselves with whatever weapon came to hand, and began to scour the country, as if to rid it of wild beasts. The monks, in their hideous language, called this “letting slip the great greyhound.” A new decree of the Parliament, passed on the 18th of August, declared all the gentlemen of the new religion, with the exception of the prince of Condé, traitors to God and the king, and summoned them to appear in three days, in default of which they were to be punished by the confiscation of their bodies and their goods. It was then that the Calvinists determined to press D’Andelot to bring some lansquenets from Germany, and to conclude a treaty with Elizabeth, queen of England, by which she undertook to furnish a force of six thousand men. Three thousand were to land at Havre-de-Grâce, and three thousand were to serve for the defence of Dieppe and Rouen, which were in the hands of Condé. This treaty was signed on the 20th of September, 1562, and Queen Elizabeth published a manifesto, in which she affirmed before heaven and before the world, that she had no other object, but to defend the loyal subjects of King Charles IX., her brother, against the tyranny of their oppressors. VII.