The same day Madame Diane de Castro took her departure, or rather her flight, for her old home,--the Benedictine convent at St. Quentin, which had been reopened after the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis. [Footnote 4: "Mémoires de Vincent Carloix," secretary to Monsieur de Vieilleville.] CHAPTER XIII A NEW ORDER OF AFFAIRS For the mistress, as well as for the favorite male dependant of a king, true death comes, not with death itself, but with disgrace. Consequently the son of the Comte de Montgommery might feel that he had taken ample vengeance for his father's horrible entombment and death upon both the constable and Diane de Poitiers, if through his instrumentality those two guilty ones should fall from power to exile, and from lofty and brilliant position to obscurity. It was this result that Gabriel was still awaiting in the gloomy and anxious solitude of his dwelling, where he had buried himself after the fatal blow of June 30. It was not his own punishment that he dreaded, if Montmorency and his accomplice should remain in power, but he loathed the thought of their chastisement being remitted. He therefore waited. During the eleven days that elapsed before Henri's agony was relieved by death, the Constable de Montmorency had put forth every effort to retain his share of influence in the government. He had written to all the princes of the blood, urging them to take their seats in the council of the young king. Above all, he had impressed the consequence of this proceeding upon Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, the next heir to the throne after the king's brothers. He had written him to make all haste, inasmuch as the least delay would enable strangers to assume a supremacy from which they could not afterward be easily dislodged. In fact, he had sent couriers here and there in all directions, urging some and imploring others, and had omitted nothing in his vigorous attempts to form a party capable of making head against that of the Guises. Diane de Poitiers, despite her deep affliction, had done her best to second his efforts, for her fate now was indissolubly connected with that of her old lover. With him in power she might still reign, to good effect at all events, although not openly. When, on the 10th of July, 1559, the eldest son of Henri II. was proclaimed king by the herald-at-arms, under the name of François II., the young prince was only sixteen; and although he had in the eyes of the law attained his majority, his youth and inexperience, as well as his feeble health, would compel him, for several years at least, to relinquish the conduct of affairs to a minister who in his name would be far more powerful than himself. Now who should be that minister,--say rather, that tutor,--the Duc de Guise or the constable; Catherine de Médicis or Antoine de Bourbon? That was the question of absorbing interest on the day following the death of Henri II.