The plan was well conceived, and better executed than such schemes usually are. The great difficulty was to keep so important a secret. It was a singular coincidence that, as in the case of the tumult of Amboise, over seven years before, the first intimations of their danger reached the Guises from the Netherlands.[435] But the courtiers, whose minds were taken up with the pleasures of the chase, and who dreamed of no such movement, were so far from believing the report, that Constable Montmorency expressed vexation that it was imagined that the Huguenots could get together one hundred men in a corner of the kingdom--not to speak of an army in the immediate vicinity of the capital--without the knowledge of himself, the head of the royal military establishment; while Chancellor de l'Hospital said that "it was a capital crime for any servant to alarm his prince with false intelligence, or give him groundless suspicions of his fellow-subjects."[436] The news, however, being soon confirmed from other sources, a spy was sent to Chatillon-sur-Loing to report upon the admiral's movements. He brought back word that he had found Coligny at home, and apparently engrossed in the labors of the vintage--so quietly was the affair conducted until within forty-eight hours of the time appointed for the general uprising.[437] It was not until hurried tidings came from all quarters that the roads to Chatillon and to Rosoy--a small place in Brie, where the Huguenots had made their rendezvous--were swarming with men mounted and armed, that the court took the alarm. [Sidenote: Flight of the court to Paris.]