While, within the kingdom, men’s minds were in this uneasy state, the news from without was by no means consolatory. Philip Dufresne Canaye, the French ambassador at Venice, was laudably active in procuring information of all movements among the Italian powers, by which his country might be affected. He learned that, while throughout Italy the utmost pains were taken to blacken the character and depreciate the resources of Henry, French subjects, disguised, were busy at Turin and Milan, and that they had frequent nocturnal interviews with the ministers of the two courts. He described minutely the features, demeanour and dress of these emissaries, and offered to have one of them seized, and carried off to France, if a small remittance were sent to him. Some strange lethargy seems to have come over the king and the French ministry at this moment; for they not only refused the money which was required, but even failed to send that which was indispensable for the payment of his spies. From this ill-timed slumber they would probably have been startled up by a fatal explosion, had not the catastrophe been averted by a disclosure of nearly all that related to the plot which had so long been carried on. The terrible secret was divulged by that very La Fin who had so largely contributed to lead Biron astray. La Fin’s first feeling of alienation from the great conspirator is supposed to have arisen out of the only act for which, during a considerable period, the marshal had been deserving of praise. From Biron’s sudden abandonment of the plan to kill the king, in the trenches of fort St. Catherine, his confident drew the conclusion that his firmness was not to be relied upon, and that consequently, at some time or other, he might bring ruin upon those who were connected with him. That he might have the means of shielding himself in case of such an event, he immediately began to preserve all the papers that passed through his hands; and when the marshal desired him to burn any of them before his face, he, by a dextrous sleight, contrived to throw others into the fire in their stead.