Castelnau, like Coligny, had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and had employed the long hours of his enforced inactivity in reading the Bible. If it did not make him a Protestant, it shook his faith in the Church of Rome. In the course of his examination at Amboise, Chancellor Olivier taunted him with his “Puritanism.” Castelnau retorted: “When I saw you on my return from Flanders, I told you how I had spent my time, and you approved of it. We were then friends; why are we not so now? Is it possible that you spoke with sincerity when you were not in favor at court, and that now, in order to please a man you despise, you are a traitor to God and your conscience?” The Cardinal of Lorraine answered for the chancellor, upon which Castelnau appealed to Guise, who replied that he knew nothing about theology. “Would to Heaven you did,” said the baron; “for I esteem you well enough to think that if you were as enlightened as your brother the cardinal, you would follow better things.” A noble testimony to the character of the duke, who somewhat churlishly rejoined that he understood nothing but cutting off heads. Coligny and D’Andelot, as well as Francis II. and Mary, entreated the duke and the cardinal to spare Castelnau’s life; but the latter answered with a blasphemous oath: “He shall die, and no man in France shall save him.” The baron died appealing to God, who would ere long visit them with signal vengeance for the innocent blood they were shedding. When Villemangis ascended the scaffold, he dipped his hands in the blood of his comrades who had been executed before him, and raising them toward heaven exclaimed: “Oh Lord! behold the blood of thy children so unjustly shed; thou wilt avenge it.” The Cardinal of Lorraine was the chief instigator of these murders: in his excessive cowardice he could not think himself safe unless all his enemies were killed. They threatened to _Stuart_ him--that is, to shoot him with a poisoned bullet, as James Stuart had shot President Minard; and one morning he found the following quatrain in his oratory: Garde-toi, Cardinal, Que tu ne sois traité A la Minarde D’une stuarde.[123]