"Philip II.," Catherine went on, "who is a great king lately, when he was in the Netherlands, had an _auto-da-fè_ postponed till he should have returned to Valladolid." "What do you think about it, cousin?" said the King to the Prince de Condé. "Sir, you cannot avoid going; the Papal Nuncio and the Ambassadors must be present. For my part, I am delighted to go if the ladies are to be of the party." The Prince, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici, had boldly taken his line. While the Prince de Condé was being admitted to the château of Amboise, the furrier to the two Queens was also arriving from Paris, brought thither by the uneasiness produced by the reports of the Rebellion, not only in himself and his family, but also in the Lalliers. At the gate of the château, when the old man craved admission, the captain of the Guard, at the words "Queen's furrier," answered at once: "My good man, if you want to be hanged, you have only to set foot in the courtyard." On hearing this, the unhappy father sat down on a rail a little way off, to wait till some attendant on either of the Queens, or some woman of the Court, should pass him, to ask for some news of his son; but he remained there the whole day without seeing anybody he knew, and was at last obliged to go down into the town, where he found a lodging, not without difficulty, in an inn on the Square where the executions were to take place. He was obliged to pay a livre a day to secure a room looking out on the Square. On the following day, he was brave enough to look on from his window at the rebels who had been condemned to the wheel, or to be hanged, as men of minor importance; and the Syndic of the Furriers' Guild was glad enough not to find his son among the sufferers. When it was all over, he went to place himself in the clerk's way. Having mentioned his name, and pressed a purse full of crown-pieces into the man's hand, he begged him to see whether, in the three former days of execution, the name of Christophe Lecamus had occurred. The registrar, touched by the despairing old father's manners and tone of voice, conducted him to his own house. After carefully comparing notes, he could assure the old man that the said Christophe was not among those who had hitherto been executed, nor was he named among those who were to die within the next few days.