be pleased to see a disturbance. The queen-mother does all she can to prevent it: the poor lady watches and toils incessantly.”?[374] On the 23d December, Morvilliers writes again: “The king and queen are always in trouble through the discords of the Guises and the admiral. No court can settle it, for the admiral objects to the parliaments and the others to the great council.” Several temporary arrangements had been made, and at last, when the three years had nearly expired, the Guises, whose desire for vengeance had grown all the stronger for being repressed, appeared at Moulins and renewed their cries for justice. On the 12th January, 1566, Charles published a declaration that “it was his desire to bring the difference about the homicide to a happy issue, and that he forbade each of the two houses to attempt any thing against the other.” After a wearisome series of explanations, more worthy of pettifogging attorneys than of brave soldiers, Coligny, in the presence of the king, declared “that he had not committed the murder or abetted it, and that he had never approved of it, then or now.”[375] With this the widow and the Cardinal of Lorraine expressed themselves satisfied, and declared they would no longer entertain revengeful feelings. Thereupon the two parties embraced; but the young Duke Henry of Guise still held out, and in the very presence of the queen challenged Coligny to single combat. “The admiral charges me,” he said, “with plotting his assassination. I will not deny it, but shall esteem it a singular favor to be shut up with him in a room, when I will show him that I am quite capable of defending myself, and need not employ other people to settle my quarrels.” So far the queen-mother’s plans were frustrated, and she was hardly more successful in arranging the difference between Marshal Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine. In consequence of the quarrels between the partisans of the two religions, the possession and carrying of arms--especially fire-arms--had been strictly prohibited in Paris. Montmorency, “a wise man and loving the public peace,”[376] who after Marshal Brissac’s death had been made governor of Paris, enforced the edict in a manner never contemplated by the king. The Cardinal of Lorraine, returning from the Council of Trent, was escorted to the capital by a number of gentlemen and relatives, but they were forbidden to enter unless they laid aside their spears and arquebuses (8th January, 1565). The prelate paid no attention to the order, upon which Montmorency fell upon his escort at the Innocents’ Cemetery in the Rue St. Denis, killed some, wounded others, and so frightened the churchman that he leaped off his horse and took refuge in a neighboring house, whence he safely reached his own hotel during the night, Pâle en couleur, de ses membres tremblant, Mieux un corps mort qu’homme vif ressemblant.