The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, which was concluded in the following spring, prevented Condé from acquiring any further military distinction in the service of his country, and henceforth whatever laurels fell to his share were gained on fields where Frenchmen were opposed to Frenchmen. If, however, the life of Henri II. had been prolonged only a little while, it is almost certain that the prince’s faithful services would not have remained unrewarded; for both the King and Diane de Poitiers were becoming seriously alarmed at the growing power and arrogance of the Guises, and the latter had broken with them and formed an alliance with Montmorency. But before the summer was over, Henri II. slept with his fathers at Saint-Denis; Diane and the Constable had been disgraced, and the Guises, thanks to the marriage of their niece, Mary Stuart, to the new King, had become the masters of France. * * * * * Condé’s patience had been severely tried during the reign which had just terminated; and it was scarcely to be expected that a young prince of his ambitious and energetic character would resign himself to the sight of the royal authority concentrated in the hands of those whose aim it had always been to exclude his family from their rightful share in the direction of affairs. Nor were the means for giving very effective expression to his dissatisfaction wanting. The Reformation in France, which had made immense strides during the last years of Henri II., notwithstanding the fierce, if intermittent, persecution to which it had been subjected, had ceased to be a purely religious movement and was developing into a formidable political combination with which it was the interest of discontented and ambitious nobles to make common cause, without in any way partaking of its spiritual aspirations. Condé, with his gay and pleasure-loving nature, could have had but little sympathy with the austere tenets of Calvinism, and it is probable that the mortifications he had experienced, the hope of uniting his fortunes with the chances of success which the Reformers were able to offer, and, above all, his hatred of the Guises, contributed far more than religious convictions to decide him to embrace their faith and their cause. His elder brother, Antoine, who, on the death of his father-in-law Henri d’Albret, in 1555, had succeeded to the throne of Navarre, had already done so, but, though brave enough in war, he was irresolute and shifty to the last degree, and now, when faced with the necessity for vigorous action, he declined to compromise himself; and it was therefore to the second Prince of the Blood that the Huguenots and the swarm of disbanded soldiers and disappointed office-seekers whom the Guises had driven into the ranks of the opposition looked for leadership. How far Condé was implicated in the Conspiracy of Amboise, whether or no he was the _chef muet_ who, in the event of a first success, was