I remember to have heard it so said a long while afterwards by my father, a truthful and straightforward man, to whom this form of sentence had always been distasteful." Many contemporaries report, and De Thou accords credence to the report, that, in order to have nothing more to fear from the house of Bourbon, the Guises had resolved to make away with King Anthony of Navarre as well as his brother the Prince of Conde, but by another process.

Feeling persuaded that it would be impossible to obtain against the elder brother a sentence ever so little in accordance with justice, for his conduct had been very reserved, they had, it is said, agreed that King Francis II.
should send for the King of Navarre into his closet and reproach him severely for his secret complicity with his brother Conde, and that if the King of Navarre defended himself stubbornly, he should be put to death on the spot by men posted there for the purpose.

It is even added that Francis II.

was to strike the first blow.

Catherine de' Medici, who was beginning to be disquieted at the arrogance and successes of the Lorraine princes, sent warning of this peril to the King of Navarre by Jacqueline de Longwy, Duchess of Montpensier; and, just as he was proceeding to the royal audience from which he was not sure to return, Anthony de Bourbon, who was wanting in head rather than in heart, said to Renty, one of his gentlemen, "If I die yonder, carry my blood-stained shirt to my wife and my son, and tell my wife to send it round to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, as my son is not yet of sufficient age." We may remark that the wife was Jeanne d'Albret, and the son was to be Henry IV.