The time had arrived when Catharine feared the influence of Coligny more than that of the Guises.  Brave, patriotic, magnetic, he had succeeded in winning Charles’s consent to declare war against Spain.  Philip II. of Spain was Catharine’s son-in-law and closest ally.  Her entire policy was threatened.  At all hazards Coligny must be gotten rid of.  The young King of Navarre, adored leader of the Protestants, was a constant menace; he, too, must in some way be disposed of.

There were sinister conferences with Philip of Spain and with his minister, that incarnation of cruelty and of the Inquisition, the Duke of Alva.

To the honor of France it may be said that the initiative, the inception of the horrid deed which was preparing was not French.  It was conceived in the brain of either this Italian woman or her Spanish adviser and co-conspirator, the Duke of Alva.  We shall never know the inside history of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.  It must ever remain a matter of conjecture just how and when it was planned, but the probabilities point strongly one way.

Charles was to be gradually prepared for it by his mother.  By working upon his fears, his suspicions, by stories of plottings against his life and his kingdom, she was to infuriate him; and then, while his rage was at its height, the opportunity for action must be at hand.  The marriage of Charles’s sister Margaret with the young Protestant leader Henry of Navarre, with its promise of future protection to the Huguenots, was part of the plot.  It would lure all the leaders of the cause to Paris.  Coligny, Conde, all the heads of the party, were urgently invited to attend the marriage feast which was to inaugurate an era of peace.

Admiral Coligny was requested by Catharine, simply as a measure of protection to the Protestants, to have an additional regiment of guards in Paris, to act in case of any unforeseen violence.

Two days after the marriage, and while the festivities were at their height, an attempt upon the life of the old admiral awoke suspicion and alarm.  But Catharine and her son went immediately in person to see the wounded old man, and to express their grief and horror at the event.  They commanded that a careful list of the names and abode of every Protestant in Paris be made, in order, as they said, “to take them under their own immediate protection.”

“My dear father,” said the king, “the hurt is yours, the grief is mine.”

At that moment the knives were already sharpened, every man instructed in his part in the hideous drama, and the signal for its commencement determined upon.  Charles did not know it, but his mother did.  She went to her son’s room that night, artfully and eloquently pictured the danger he was in, confessed to him that she had authorized the attempt upon Coligny, but that it was done because of the admiral’s plottings against him, which she had discovered.  But the Guises—­her enemies and his—­they knew it, and would denounce her and the king!  The only thing now is to finish the work.  He must die.