This, in brief, is what she had done in the bitterness of her hatred against the Guises: she had entered into a secret alliance with the Prince de Condé and Antoine de Bourbon; she had effected a reconciliation secretly with the old Constable de Montmorency. Nought but hatred can cause hatred to be forgotten. Her new and ill-assorted friends, urged on by her, had fomented rebellion in various provinces, had aroused Dauphiné under Montbrun, and Provence under the brothers Mouvans, and had caused an attempt to be made upon Lyons by Maligny. The Guises, on their side, were by no means asleep. They had assembled the States-General at Orléans, and had taken care to have a majority devoted to them. Then, too, they had summoned the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé to attend the States-General, as was their right. Catherine de Médicis sent warning after warning to the princes to dissuade them from putting themselves in their enemy's power; but their duty called them, and the Cardinal de Lorraine gave them the king's word as a pledge of their security. Therefore they came to Orléans. The very day of their arrival Antoine de Navarre was consigned to a certain house in the city where he was kept continually in sight, and the Prince de Condé was cast into prison. Then an extraordinary commission issued to try the prince; and he was condemned to death at Orléans by the procurement of the Guises,--the very man whose innocence the Duc de Guise himself at Amboise had announced his willingness to answer for with his sword. Only one or two signatures were still to be procured, which the Chancellor l'Hôpital was delaying, before the sentence would be executed. The foregoing statement will serve to show how matters stood on the evening of the 4th of December, as regards the party of the Guises, of which Le Balafré was the arm and the cardinal the head, and the Bourbon faction, of which Catherine de Médicis was the secret soul. Everything depended, for both sides, upon the expiring breath of the anointed youth. If François II. could only live a few days longer, the Prince de Condé would be executed, the King of Navarre might be accidentally slain in some altercation, and Catherine de Médicis banished to Florence. So far as the States-General were concerned, the Guises were masters, and if necessary, kings. If, on the other hand, the young king should die before his uncles were relieved of their enemies, the struggle would begin again, with the chances against them rather than in their favor. Therefore what Catherine de Médicis and Charles de Lorraine were waiting and watching for with such an anguish of interest on that cold night of the 4th of December, in that apartment in the city of Orléans, was not so much the life or death of their royal son and nephew as the triumph or defeat of their cause. Mary Stuart alone watched over her young, dearly loved husband without thinking what loss his death might entail upon her.