The Guises on their side, hated by the Huguenots, disliked by the Montmorencies, and distrusted by the Queen, were sincerely anxious for a union with Condé. At the end of December 1564, the Cardinal de Lorraine, returning from the Council of Trent, passed through Soissons, to which town the prince had come, on a visit to his sister, Catherine de Bourbon, abbess of the Convent of Notre-Dame. A very cordial interview took place between them, in which his Eminence suggested to Condé a marriage between him and Mary Stuart. The cardinal had already approached his niece on the subject, excusing the inconsistency of a Prince of the Church recommending a heretic as a husband on the ground that the Huguenots were so determined to compass his ruin that the marriage was absolutely necessary for his political salvation. It is true that he had received scant encouragement from that quarter, since the young queen strongly resented the idea that she should sacrifice her own inclinations for his Eminence’s advantage. “Truly I am beholden to my uncle,” she exclaimed, ironically. “So that it be well with him, he careth not what becometh of me.”[68] Nevertheless, the cardinal did not despair of ultimately obtaining her consent. On leaving Soissons, the Cardinal de Lorraine proceeded to Paris, followed by “fifty arquebusiers and some hundreds of his friends and servants, with arms, pistols, and arquebuses.” On reaching Saint-Denis, he was met by a gentleman of the Maréchal de Montmorency, governor of the Île-de-France and his personal enemy, who warned him that he could not be permitted to enter the city with an armed retinue, since the edicts forbade it. The prelate, however, thought proper to ignore this warning, and, on 8 January, 1565, he and his whole company entered Paris by the Porte Saint-Denis. Near the Church of the Innocents they were met by Montmorency, at the head of a considerable force. The marshal called upon them to lay down their arms; one man refused and was immediately killed; the rest obeyed, and the cardinal, never remarkable for his personal courage, took refuge in the house of a merchant, where he remained until nightfall.[69] This affair caused a great commotion. The partisans of the Guises assembled at Meudon, under the leadership of the Duc d’Aumale, and assumed a most threatening attitude; the Maréchal de Montmorency summoned his friends to his assistance, and, since he was known to favour the Huguenots, Coligny and a number of Protestant gentlemen hastened to Paris to offer him their services. To the general astonishment, however, Condé took the cardinal’s part and openly blamed Montmorency. “If,” said he, referring to the fracas by the Innocents, “this was intended for a jest, it was too much; if it was in earnest, too little.”