Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an enterprise which they should be called upon to accomplish. The King was in great alarm at the “League,” but he wisely constituted himself a member. The confederates kept him in the dark as to the chief of their objects. The suspicious monarch, on the other hand, encouraged his minions to annoy his good cousin of Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St. Megrim, did more: he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon, a singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused his Duchess from her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her alarmed ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her take at once from his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which he offered her:--adding that she had better die, having so greatly sinned. The offended and innocent wife cared not for life, since she was suspected, and drank off the contents of the cup, after protestation of her innocence. The draught was of harmless preparation, for the Duke was well assured of the spotless character of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by his infidelities. He kissed her hand and took his leave; but he sent a score of his trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell on St. Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King’s apartments. The monarch made no complaint at the outrage; but he raised a tomb over the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above which a triad of Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding their stony knuckles to their tearless eyes, affecting the passion which they could not feel. In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebellion at home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every court in Europe. Between the intrigues of Guise and the recklessness of the King, the public welfare suffered shipwreck. So nearly complete was the ruin, that it was popularly said, “The Minions crave all: the King gives all; the Queen-mother manages all; Guise opposes all; the Red Ass (the Cardinal) embroils all, and would that the Devil had all!”