He had been employed constantly from that time, as a spy it is said, by the chiefs of the Reformers--a vocation for which, it would seem, he was but little adapted, for the indiscretion of his language must have continually revealed his true sentiments.

When he heard, in 1562, of the death of Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, "That," said he, "is not what will put an end to the war; what is wanted is the dog with the big collar." "Whom do you mean ?" asked somebody.

"The great Guisard; and here's the arm that will do the trick." "He used to show," says D'Aubigne, "bullets cast to slay the Guisard, and thereby rendered himself ridiculous." After the battle of Dreux he was bearer of a message from the Lord of Soubise to Admiral de Coligny, to whom he gave an account of the situation of the Reformers in Dauphiny and in Lyonness.

His report no doubt interested the admiral, who gave him twenty crowns to go and play spy in the camp of the Duke of Guise, and, some days later, a hundred crowns to buy a horse.

It was thus that Poltrot was put in a position to execute the design he had been so fond of proclaiming before he had any communication with Coligny.