For that which passed betwixt them at this conference, since I find nothing of it in the most exact memoirs of those times, I shall not offer to relate it, as Davila has done by a certain poetical licence which he and some other historians have used, to make men think and speak without their leave, whatever they please to put into their thoughts and mouths. What I can deliver for undoubted truth is this, that there was nothing concluded at this interview; and that the king, who had resolved beforehand to chastise the most seditious of the sixteen, and to make himself master of Paris, after a long consultation taken by night, with those in whom he most confided, continued firm to the same resolution, and set up his rest to stand by it, in spite of the arrival of the duke. With this determination, he sent the next morning for the prevost of the merchants, and the sheriffs, and commanded them, in company of the lords De Villequier and Francis d’O. to make an exact search for all those strangers who were come to Paris some few days since, without any urgent occasion to call them thither, and to cause them forthwith to depart the town, without respect of persons. This was a manifest endeavour to weaken the Duke of Guise; to reduce him to those seven or eight gentlemen, who attended him into Paris; and consequently to give him occasion of believing, that after they had rid themselves of the others, they would attack him. Perhaps the design was so laid, as some have conjectured with probability enough; but if this were really their intention, there are others, who believe that, according to the advice which was given by the abbot of Elbene, they had done more wisely to have begun with the Duke of Guise, when they had him single, and at their mercy, coopt up in the Louvre: and they ground this opinion on the meaning of that abbot’s words, who quoted the scripture to this purpose, “It is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the flock shall be scattered.” However it was intended, the Parisians immediately took the alarm, perceiving clearly that those strangers who were to be sent out of the city, were no others but those very men whom the Duke of Guise had conveyed into the town for their defence, and for his own. Insomuch that when they went about to execute that order, and to search their houses, every one opposed them; and the citizens set themselves with so much obstinacy to conceal their lodgers, that the deputies and commissaries, fearing a general insurrection through all the quarters, durst proceed no farther. And in the mean time, the Duke of Guise, who was the soul that actuated this great body, forbore not going to the Louvre, but well accompanied; and the very evening before the barricades he presented the napkin to the king.