This change of front frightened Elizabeth, who feared that if the Protestants in the Netherlands were conquered her turn would come next, and she once more held out the bait of marriage. She expressed sorrow to Castelnau that the Duke had ceased to write to her and had forgotten her. But this time the fish failed to rise, and for the next three years Alençon remained ostentatiously Catholic, sometimes in arms against Huguenot resistance, sometimes at Court with his brother, with whom he was nominally on good terms. But the personal hatred and jealousy between them continued still, and the duels and murders between their respective courtiers went on as before. The Duke’s turbulent and discontented friends openly scoffed at the painted mignons who surrounded the King, and if they resented the insult, Bussy d’Amboise, the first swordsman in France, was ready to fight any number of them. At length, at the beginning of 1578, Bussy d’Amboise was waylaid in Paris and nearly murdered by some of the King’s courtiers, and had to seek safety in absence from the Court. Then several other of the Duke’s friends were bought over by favours to the King’s side, and the mignons, emboldened by his isolation, went to the length of sneering at Alençon himself. This was at a ball at the palace of the Montmorencis to which Catharine had forced her son to go against his will; and fearing that this demonstration of the mignons portended the Bastille or poison for himself, the Duke lost patience, and demanded permission to withdraw himself from Court for a time. The only answer vouchsafed was the rigid searching of his apartments by the Scots guard at midnight, in the presence of the King himself, with every circumstance of contumely. The Duke was arrested, all his papers were seized, and the principal friends who remained with him were cast into the Bastille.