He was as haughty as he was aspiring. The Guise had induced the weak Anthony of Navarre to turn Romanist; but the cardinal did not treat that king with more courtesy on that account. One frosty morning, not only did the princely priest keep the mountain king tarrying at his garden gate for an audience, but when he went down to his majesty, he listened, all befurred as he was, to the shivering monarch who humbly preferred his suit, cap in hand. He was covetous and haughty, but he sometimes found his match. His niece, Mary Stuart, had quarreled with Catherine de Medicis, whose especial wrath had been excited by Mary’s phrase applied to Catherine, of “The Florentine tradeswoman.” The Scottish Queen resolved, after this quarrel, to repair to the North. The cardinal was at her side when she was examining her jewels, previously to their being packed up. He tenderly remarked that the sea was dangerous, the jewels costly, and that his niece could not do better than leave them in his keeping. “Good uncle,” said the vivacious Mary, “I and my jewels travel together. If I trust one to the sea, I may the other; and therewith, _adieu!_” The cardinal bit his lips and blessed her. Ranke is puzzled where to find the principal author of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. There is no difficulty in the matter. The Guises had appealed to the chances of battle to overcome their chief adversaries in the kingdom. But for every Huguenot father slain, there arose as many filial avengers as he had sons. The causes of quarrel were individual as well as general. A Huguenot had slain the second Duke, and his widow was determined to be avenged. The Cardinal was wroth with the King for retaining Protestant archers in his body-guard. The archers took an unclean vengeance, and defiled the pulpit in the Chapel Royal, wherefrom the Cardinal was accustomed to denounce the doctrine of their teachers. His Eminence formed the confederacy by which it was resolved to destroy the enemy at a blow. To the general causes, I need not allude. The plot itself was formed in Oliver Clisson’s house, in Paris, known as “the Hotel of Mercy.” But the representatives of Rome and Spain, united with those of France, met upon the frontier, and there made the final arrangements which were followed by such terrible consequences. When the stupendous deed was being done, the Cardinal was absent from France; but he fairly took upon himself the guilt, when he conferred the hand of his illegitimate daughter Anne d’Arne on the officer Besme whose dagger had given the _first_ mortal stab to Coligny, the chief of the immolated victims of that dreadful day--and Rome approved.