The throne found in his children more dangerous supporters than he had ever been himself; and the people paid for their popular admiration with loss of life and liberty. The church, however, exulted; for Claude of Lorraine, first Duke of Guise, gave to it the legitimate son, Cardinal Charles, who devised the massacre of the day of St. Bartholomew; and the illegitimate son, the Abbé de Cluny, who, on that terrible day, made his dagger drink the blood of the Huguenots, till the wielder of it became as drunk with frenzy as he was wont to be with the fiery wine which was his peculiar and intense delight. The first Duke of Guise only laid a foundation, upon which he left his heirs and successors to build at their discretion. He had, nevertheless, effected much. He had gained for his family considerable wealth; and if he had not also obtained a crown, he had acquired possession of rich crown-lands. The bestowing upon him of these earned popular execration for the king; the people, at the same time, confessed that the services of Guise were worthy of no meaner reward. When King Francis saw that he was blamed for bestowing what the recipient was deemed worthy of having granted to him, we can hardly wonder that Francis, while acknowledging the merits of the aspiring family, bade the members of his own to be on their guard against the designs of every child of the house of Lorraine. But _he_ was no child who now succeeded to the honors of his father, the first duke. Francis of Guise, at his elevation to the ducal title, saw before him two obstacles to further greatness. One was a weak king, Henry II.; and the other, a powerful favorite, the Constable de Montmorency, from whose family, it was popularly said, had sprung the first Christian within the realm of France. Francis speedily disposed of the favorite, and almost as speedily raised himself to the vacant office, which he exercised so as to further his remote purposes. In the meantime the king was taught to believe that his crown and happiness were dependent on his Lorraine cousins, who, on their side, were not only aiming at the throne of France for one member of the house, but were aspiring to the tiara for a second; the crown of Naples for a third--to influence in Flanders and in Spain, and even to the diadem of Elizabeth of England, succession to which was recognised as existing in them, by Mary Stuart, in case of her own decease without direct heirs. It is said that the British Romanists looked forward with unctuous complacency to the period when the sceptre of this island should fall into the blood-stained grasp of a “Catholic Guise.”