This latter safeguard was worth nothing in his case, for there had been created, just lately, eighteen new knights, all friends and creatures of the Guises.

His claim, however, was rejected; and he repeated it, at the same time refusing to reply to any interrogation, and appealing "from the king ill advised to the king better advised." A priest was sent to celebrate mass in his chamber: but "I came," said he, "to clear myself from the calumnies alleged against me, which is of more consequence to me than hearing mass." He did not attempt to conceal his antipathy towards the Guises, and the part he had taken in the hostilities directed against them.

An officer, to whom permission had been given to converse with him in presence of his custodians, told him "that an appointment (accommodation) with the Duke of Guise would not be an impossibility for him." "Appointment between him and me!" answered Conde: "it can only be at the point of the lance." The Duchess Renee of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII., having come to France at this time, went to Orleans to pay her respects to the king.
The Duke of Guise was her son-in-law, and she reproached him bitterly with Conde's trial.

"You have just opened," said she, "a wound which will bleed a long while; they who have dared to attack persons of the blood royal have always found it a bad job." The prince asked to see, in the presence of such persons as the king might appoint, his wife, Eleanor of Roye, who, from the commencement of the trial, "solicited this favor night and day, often throwing herself on her knees before the king with tears incredible; but the Cardinal of Lorraine, fearing lest his Majesty should be moved with compassion, drove away the princess most rudely, saying that, if she had her due, she would herself be placed in the lowest dungeon." For them of Guise the princess was a thorn in the flesh, for she lacked not wits, or language, or courage, insomuch that they had some discussion about making away with her.

[_Memoires de Castelnau,_ p.