“Thus,” continues the amusing chronicler, “thus did our footmen lose their virginity, and of this unlawful conjunction ensued the procreation of Lady Picoree, who is since grown into such dignity that she is now termed madame; yea, if this civil war continue, I doubt she will become a princess. Of the Catholics, I will say that at the beginning they were likewise well ordered, and did not much annoy the commons.” The Huguenots were the first to make the war support itself by contributions levied upon the enemy. When the admiral was in Normandy, the Catholic population of Caen was required to furnish the sum of 10,000, not, however, until Beza’s appeal to his co-religionists for money had utterly failed.[295] Before the two armies came into actual collision, Catherine interposed as a peace-maker. She saw plainly that, whichever side conquered, the crown must suffer, and that it would be ruinous to her power to allow one party to exterminate the other. Accordingly, several attempts were made to induce the Huguenots to lay down their arms. Montluc and Vieilleville were successively dispatched to Orleans, and as they could obtain nothing from the confederated nobles, Catherine determined to try the effect of her own power of persuasion. A conference took place on the 2d of June between her and Condé at Thoury in Beauce, ten leagues from Orleans. La Noue describes the armed escorts on each side, sitting on horseback and looking at each other for half an hour, “each coveting to see, one his brother, another his uncle, cousin, friend, or old companion.” At last they got leave from their respective commanders to speak with one another. They met with great “demonstrations of amity.” “The Catholics, imagining the Protestants to be lost, exhorted them to see to themselves, and not to enter obstinately into this miserable war, wherein near kinsmen must murder one another. Hereto they answered that they detested it; howbeit, if they had no recourse to their defense, they were assured of like entreaty as many other Protestants had received, who were cruelly slain in sundry parts of France. Each provoked the other to peace, and to persuade their superiors to hearken thereto.” An eye-witness writes: “On the 17th of June the queen set off again from the forest of Vincennes in great haste, and it was believed this time that she would conclude a peace before her return. She had taken medicine and been bled the day before, being ill through a fall from her hackney, going and coming with such dispatch.”