Navarre, of a more politic and wary disposition than his cousin, and, besides, somewhat indifferent on the subject of religion, assumed a conciliatory tone, begging the King not to compel him to outrage his conscience, and to consider that he was now not only his kinsman, but closely connected with him by marriage. Condé, on the other hand, courageously replied that he refused to believe the King capable of violating his most sacred pledges, but that he was accountable for his religion to God alone, and would remain faithful to it, even if it cost him his life. “Madman! conspirator! rebel! son of a rebel!” cried the infuriated monarch. “If in three days you do not change your tone, I will have you strangled!” And he dismissed them from his presence, with directions that they should be most strictly guarded. The conversion of the two princes greatly occupied the Court. The young Queen of Navarre, a fervent Catholic, spared no effort to persuade her husband to return to the fold of the Church, and found zealous auxiliaries in the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Queen’s confessor the Jesuit Maldonato, and Sureau des Roziers, an ex-Huguenot pastor, who had been converted to Catholicism by the sound of arquebuses. The astute Béarnais, who already seems to have had some presentiment of the part he was one day to play, was not the man to sacrifice a great future to his attachment to the Reformed doctrines, and accordingly feigned to lend an attentive ear to the arguments of his teachers. Condé was the object of like solicitation, to which, however, he replied with anger and contempt. His obstinacy so enraged the King that one day, when he learned that the prince had proved more than usually contumacious, he called for his arms, swearing that he would proceed to his cousin’s apartments, at the head of his guards, and slay him with his own hand. Probably, he only intended to intimidate him into submission; but his queen, the gentle and pious Elizabeth of Austria, believing that he was in earnest, threw herself at his feet, and besought him not to stain his hands with his kinsman’s blood. His Majesty yielded to her entreaties and contented himself with summoning Condé to his presence, and, when he appeared, shouting in a voice of thunder: “Mass, death, or Bastille! Choose!” “God allows me not, my lord and king,” replied the prince quietly, “to choose the first. Of the others, be it at your pleasure, whichever God may in His providence direct!” Despite this bold answer, he shortly afterwards consented to abjure, “laying upon the head of Des Roziers the risk of his damnation”; the King of Navarre did likewise; and on 3 October, the “converted” princes addressed to the Pope a very humble letter, begging him to accept their submission and admit them into the fold. Condé and Marie de Clèves also expressed their regret for having allowed themselves to be united in wedlock without the rites of Holy Church.