de Soissons in order to counterbalance the influence of the Prince de
Conti and the Guises; an unfortunate circumstance for Marie, who had so
unguardedly betrayed her gratitude for his prompt and zealous services
at the first moment of her affliction, that the vain and ambitious Duke
had profited by the circumstance to influence her opinions and measures
so seriously as to draw down the most malicious suspicions of their
mutual position, suspicions to which the antecedents of M. d'Epernon
unhappily lent only too much probability.[84]

In addition to this open and threatening misunderstanding between two of
the first Princes of the Blood, a new danger was created by the
imprudence of the same noble, who, presuming upon his newly-acquired
importance, uttered the most violent and menacing expressions against
the Protestants, declaring that they had been tolerated too long, and
that it would soon become necessary to reduce them to a proper sense of
their insignificance; an opinion which he had no sooner uttered than the
Marquis d'Ancre in his turn assured the Regent that if she desired to
secure a happy and prosperous reign to her son, she had no alternative
but to forbid the exercise of the reformed religion, to whose adherents
the late King had owed his death.[85]

Conscious of the cabal which was organizing against them, and having
been apprised that M. d'Epernon had doubled the number of his guards,
the Ducs de Bouillon, de Guise, and de Sully adopted similar
precautions, and even kept horses ready saddled in their stables in
order to escape upon the instant should they be threatened with
violence. The minor nobility followed the example of their superiors,
and soon every hôtel inhabited by men of rank resembled a fortress,
while the streets resounded with the clashing of arms and the trampling
of horses, to the perpetual terror of the citizens.