It is extraordinary that historians have
mistaken one of the wiliest schemes of the great queen for uncertainty
and hesitation! Catherine never went more directly to her own ends
than in just such schemes which appeared to thwart them. The king of
Navarre, quite incapable of understanding her motives, fell into her
plan in all sincerity, and despatched Chaudieu to Calvin, as we have
seen. The minister had risked his life to be secretly in Orleans and
watch events; for he was, while there, in hourly peril of being
discovered and hung as a man under sentence of banishment.
According to the then fashion of travelling, Chaudieu could not reach
Geneva before the month of February, and the negotiations were not
likely to be concluded before the end of March; consequently the
assembly could certainly not take place before the month of May, 1561.
Catherine, meantime, intended to amuse the court and the various
conflicting interests by the coronation of the king, and the
ceremonies of his first "lit de justice," at which l'Hopital and de
Thou recorded the letters-patent by which Charles IX. confided
the administration to his mother in common with the present
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, Antoine de Navarre, the weakest
prince of those days.
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