assuming the leadership of the League, seemed to warrant this view. So
the King, in a final struggle against the Guise elements, might still
rely on the aid of the Huguenots. But the King still remained outside of
the League, although nominally its chief. Catherine saw that it was not
to be deluded from its real purpose. The only thing to do was to
conciliate the Duke of Guise into waiting. There was little likelihood of
either of her sons attaining middle age. The Duke of Guise, a splendid
specimen of physical manhood, would doubtless outlive them; he might be
induced to wait for their deaths. The rightful successor to the throne
would then be Henri of Navarre, head of the Bourbon family. But he was a
Huguenot; therefore Catherine affected to the Duke of Guise a great
desire that he should succeed her sons. The existing peace allowed the
Duke of Guise the leisure in which to be dangerous; so every means to
keep him quiet was taken.

Some of these things De Rilly told me, as we stood in the embrasure of a
window in the gallery, while Catherine visited her son, Anjou,--whose
discontent at court complicated the situation, for he might, at any time,
leave Paris and lead the Huguenots and malcontents in a rebellion which
would further discredit her family with the people, demonstrate anew the
King's incompetence, and give the League an opportunity.

"And does the Duke of Guise allow himself to be cajoled?" I asked De
Rilly.

"Who knows? He is a cautious man, anxious to make no false step. They
say he would be willing to wait for the death of the King, but that he is
ever being urged to immediate action by De Noyard."

"De Noyard?"