The chiefs of the old nobility, and Princes of the blood, found themselves prisoners, or practically exiles. Their hereditary rights were denied to them, they were cut off from the State. It is not strange that all the liberalism, all the patriotism in France, saw with horror the coming ruin of their country, and forgetting, for the moment, differences of creed, coalesced with one accord against the tyrants. The outcome of this was the attempt of Amboise--and its results are known. The Right had lost, by the will of God, and now the conquerors were slaking their vengeance in blood, and in the name of the child King condemning their victims to hideous tortures and to awful deaths. In the history of my country there is but one crime darker than this, one page more stained with sin. But the day was yet far distant when the bells of St. Germain l’Auxerrois were to clang out the signal for the Feast of St. Bartholomew, and we, who stood gasping with horror, thought that the worst had befallen France. The one hope of all Frenchmen who loved their country, Louis of Condé, was in the hands of the Guisards. His life hung by a hair, and on that life hung, as we thought then, the safety of France. We were powerless to help, and here at Châtillon we, who had escaped disaster as yet, were practically prisoners, for de Termes held us in check from Ligueil, and the lances of Montluc gleamed from every tower from Buzançais to St. Aignan. We were, in short, caged. We could run about in our cage but not beyond its bars. We were in a trap--like rats in a trap. The Princess of Condé, Eleanore de Roye, had sunk into a speechless grief that was terrible to witness. Every day brought danger nearer and nearer, and yet she refused to move, refused to make any attempt at escape; we might have twice made a dash for Poitou, where the Admiral and the Rhinegrave were still in some force. She, however, declined point blank, and sat like a Penelope, weaving endless plans to free her husband, each one more hopeless than the other. I stood, as I have said, on the cavalier, looking aimlessly at the sky, and then made a half movement to join my friends, when I was arrested by a cry, such a cry as might come from the throat of a tongueless man, and, turning round, saw Majolais on the carriage of a brass carronade, pointing eagerly at something. The wind had caught his short red cloak, blowing it out like a banner, and the hooded falcon he held in leash was screaming and fluttering overhead, the full length of his tether. There the creature stood, distorted and misshapen, uttering his strange cries, now looking at me, then turning his yellow eyes down the St. Aignan road, and swinging his arms wildly.