Condé is disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom--The prince incurs the hatred of the extreme Catholics--Plot to assassinate him on the Feast of Corpus Christi--Suspicion with which he is regarded by the zealots of his own party--Condé, deceived in his ambition and mortified by the hostility of the extremists on both sides, turns to pleasure for consolation--Violent passion of the Maréchale de Saint-André for him--Indignation and alarm aroused at Geneva by the rumours of Condé’s amorous adventures--Calvin and Bèze address a joint letter of remonstrance to the prince--Condé at Muret--Death of two of his children--Failing health of the Princesse de Condé--Her touching devotion to her husband--Her dignified attitude in regard to his infidelities--Return of Condé to the Court--Quarrel between him and Isabelle de Limeuil--Temporary triumph of the Maréchale de Saint-André--Refusal of the King to sanction the betrothal of the Marquis de Conti to Mlle. de Saint-André--Condé quits the Court in anger, but is reconciled to Isabelle and returns--A second honeymoon. After having broken definitely with his former allies, and even borne arms against them in person, Condé looked to receive from the hands of the Queen-Mother the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which Catherine appears to have given him to understand would be the reward of his compliance with her wishes. But her Majesty, though she complimented him warmly on the courage he had displayed during the siege, had not the smallest intention of sharing with the prince the power of which she was so jealous; and, by causing the Parlement of Rouen to proclaim the majority of Charles IX., who had just entered his fourteenth year, she adroitly contrived to reduce to nothing all pretension on his part to the coveted title and to retain the sovereign authority in her own hands. The discovery that he had been the dupe of his ambition was not the only mortification which Condé had to endure. If he were at bottom but a lukewarm adherent of the Reformed Faith, if in the negotiations which had preceded the Peace of Amboise he had been not unmindful of his own interests, he was none the less sincerely anxious that the rights guaranteed to the Protestants by that treaty should be observed; and his persistence in defending them drew upon him the hatred of the extreme Catholics. So exasperated, indeed, were the fanatical Parisians against him that for some months his friends considered it unsafe for him to appear in the capital, even in the suite of the King, and on one occasion when he did venture there, he narrowly escaped being assassinated. In one of his despatches to Cecil, Middlemore gives the following account of the affair:--