in waiting to receive them.

M. de Miossans, a Catholic gentleman, having received an intimation
of this design, considered it so prejudicial to the interests
of the King his master, that he communicated it to me with the
intention of frustrating a plot of so much danger to themselves
and to the State. I went immediately to the King and the Queen
my mother, and informed them that I had a matter of the utmost
importance to lay before them; but that I could not declare it
unless they would be pleased to promise me that no harm should
ensue from it to such as I should name to them, and that they
would put a stop to what was going forward without publishing
their knowledge of it. Having obtained my request, I told them
that my brother Alençon and the King my husband had an intention,
on the very next day, of joining some Huguenot troops, which
expected them, in order to fulfil the engagement they had made
upon the Admiral's death; and for this their intention, I begged
they might be excused, and that they might be prevented from
going away without any discovery being made that their designs
had been found out. All this was granted me, and measures were
so prudently taken to stay them, that they had not the least
suspicion that their intended evasion was known. Soon after, we
arrived at St. Germain, where we stayed some time, on account
of the King's indisposition. All this while my brother Alençon
used every means he could devise to ingratiate himself with me,
until at last I promised him my friendship, as I had before done
to my brother the King of Poland. As he had been brought up at a
distance from Court, we had hitherto known very little of each
other, and kept ourselves at a distance. Now that he had made
the first advances, in so respectful and affectionate a manner,