When the President of the Parlement found these weighty and irregular documents thrown into the scale, he temporised. The suit was suspended; the Jesuits were provisionally allowed to teach. In the following year, however, the University appealed to the Constable of France, complaining that the professors were unable to keep discipline, as a pupil went to the Jesuits the moment he was reprimanded. Then two singular discoveries were made by the Jesuits, and they had the effect of disarming many of their patriotic opponents. In 1567, Father Oliver Manares, the Provincial, informed the court and the civic authorities of Paris that the Huguenots had concerted a plot to sack and burn the city; he had learned it from a Polish noble, who was visiting Paris and had been warned to leave in time.[5] Paris flew to arms and scared the supposed plotters; it was also grateful to Father Manares, and incensed against the Huguenots. In the same year, Father Auger was fortunate enough to discover a similar plot at Lyons. There is evidence of a conspiracy at Lyons, but the historian must regard the "discovery" of Manares with grave suspicion. The effect of the discoveries was that the grateful King at once ordered that all opposition to the Jesuits must cease, and all legacies to the Society must be valid in law; and that the Catholics were soon ranged against the Huguenots in open field. The ablest of the Jesuits, Auger and Possevin, ardently stimulated the Catholics, accompanied the troops, and were even seen in the thick of the battles.
A peace was arranged in 1570, to the disappointment of the Jesuits; and the country still enjoyed this precarious peace when Alessandrini and Borgia reached the court, at Blois, in the first month of 1572. In regard to the discussions which took place we know only that France declared itself unable to join in the crusade against the Turk, and Charles's sister, Mary of Valois, was promised to Henri de Béarn instead of to Sebastian of Spain, as the Pope wished. Alessandrini and Borgia went back to Rome, to announce their failure to the dying Pope. And on 24th August of that year took place the horrible massacre which lays an eternal stain on the memory of Catherine de Medici. We have, fortunately, neither to linger over the revolting details of that outrage, nor to enter the larger controversy as to the responsibility for it.[6] The general feeling of historians is that the massacre was deliberately planned by Catherine; and, since the Jesuits had influence with Catherine, we have to consider whether they may have been implicated in the barbaric slaughter.