There are elements of mystery about the massacre of Saint Bartholomew over which, presumably, historians will continue to dispute as long as histories are written. Indeed, it is largely of their disputes that the mystery is begotten. Broadly speaking, these historians may be divided into two schools—Catholic and anti-Catholic. The former have made it their business to show that the massacre was purely a political affair, having no concern with religion; the latter have been equally at pains to prove it purely an act of religious persecution having no concern with politics. Those who adopt the latter point of view insist that the affair was long premeditated, that it had its source in something concerted some seven years earlier between Catherine of Medicis and the sinister Duke of Alva. And they would seem to suggest that Henry of Navarre, the nominal head of the Protestant party, was brought to Paris to wed Marguerite de Valois merely so that by this means the Protestant nobles of the kingdom, coming to the capital for the wedding, should be lured to their destruction.
It does not lie within the purview of the present narrative to enter into a consideration of the arguments of the two schools, nor will it be attempted.
But it may briefly be stated that the truth lies probably in a middle course of reasoning—that the massacre was political in conception and religious in execution; or, in other words, that statecraft deliberately made use of fanaticism as of a tool; that the massacre was brought about by a sudden determination begotten of opportunity which is but another word for Chance.
Against the theory of premeditation the following cardinal facts may be urged:
(a) The impossibility of guarding for seven years a secret that several must have shared;
(b) The fact that neither Charles IX nor his mother Catherine were in any sense bigoted Catholics, or even of a normal religious sincerity.
(c) The lack of concerted action—so far as the kingdom generally was concerned—in the execution of the massacre.
A subsidiary disproof lies in the attempted assassination of Coligny two days before the massacre, an act which might, by putting the Huguenots on their guard, have caused the miscarriage of the entire plan—had it existed.
It must be borne in mind that for years France had been divided by religious differences into two camps, and that civil war between Catholic and Huguenot had ravaged and distracted the country. At the head of the Protestant party stood that fine soldier Gaspard de Chatillon, Admiral de Coligny, virtually the Protestant King of France, a man who raised armies, maintaining them by taxes levied upon Protestant subjects, and treated with Charles IX as prince with prince. At the head of the Catholic party—the other imperium in imperio—stood the Duke of Guise. The third and weakest party in the State, serving, as it seemed, little purpose beyond that of holding the scales between the other turbulent two, was the party of the King.
The motives and events that precipitated the massacre are set forth in the narration of the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou (afterwards Henri III). It was made by him to Miron, his physician and confidential servant in Cracow, when he ruled there later as King of Poland, under circumstances which place it beyond suspicion of being intended to serve ulterior aims. For partial corroboration, and for other details of the massacre itself, we have the narratives, among others, of Sully, who was then a young man in the train of the King of Navarre, and of Lusignan, a gentleman of the Admiral's household. We shall closely follow these in our reconstruction of the event and its immediate causes.
The gay chatter of the gallants and ladies thronging the long gallery of the Louvre sank and murmured into silence, and a movement was made to yield a free passage to the King, who had suddenly made his appearance leaning affectionately upon the shoulder of the Admiral de Coligny.
The Duke of Anjou, a slender, graceful young man in a gold-embroidered suit of violet, forgot the interest he was taking in his beautiful hands to bend lower over the handsome Madame de Nemours what time the unfriendly eyes of both were turned upon the Admiral.
The King and the great Huguenot leader came slowly down the gallery, an oddly contrasting pair. Coligny would have been the taller by a half-head but for his stoop, yet in spite of it there was energy and military vigour in his carriage, just as there was a severe dignity amounting to haughtiness in his scarred and wrinkled countenance. A bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three of his teeth at the battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that lost itself in his long white beard. His forehead was high and bald, and his eyes were of a steely keenness under their tufted brows. He was dressed with Calvinistic simplicity entirely in black, and just as this contrasted with the King's suit of sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of his countenance contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign's.
Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was of a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes, and a thick, pendulous nose. The protruding upper lip of his long, thin mouth gave him an oafish expression, which was increased by his habit of carrying his head craned forward.
His nature was precisely what you would have expected from his appearance—dull and gross. He was chiefly distinguished among men of birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological inventiveness in blasphemy.
At the end of the gallery Coligny stooped to kiss the royal hand in leave-taking. With his other hand Charles patted the Admiral's shoulder.
“Count me your friend,” he said, “body and soul, heart and bowels, even as I count you mine. Fare you well, my father.”
Coligny departed, and the King retraced his steps, walking quickly, his head hunched between his shoulders, his baleful eyes looking neither to left nor right. As he passed out, the Duke of Anjou quitted the side of Madame de Nemours, and went after him. Then at last the suspended chatter of the courtiers broke loose again.
The King was pacing his cabinet—a simple room furnished with a medley of objects appertaining to study, to devotion, and to hunting. A large picture of the Virgin hung from a wall flanked on either side by an arquebus, and carrying a hunting-horn on one of its upper corners. A little alabaster holy-water font near the door, crowned by a sprig of palm, seemed to serve as a receptacle for hawk-bells and straps. There was a writing-table of beautifully carved walnut near the leaded window, littered with books and papers—a treatise on hunting lay cheek by jowl with a Book of Hours; a string of rosary beads and a dog-whip lay across an open copy of Ronsard's verses. The King was quite the vilest poetaster of his day.
Charles looked over his shoulder as his brother entered. The scowl on his face deepened when he saw who came, and with a grunt he viciously kicked the liver-coloured hound that lay stretched at his feet. The hound fled yelping to a corner, the Duke checked, startled, in his advance.
“Well?” growled the King. “Well? Am I never to have peace? Am I never to be alone? What now? Bowels of God! What do you want?”
His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the gold hilt of the dagger at his girdle:
Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke precipitately withdrew.
“It is nothing. Another time, since I disturb you now.” He bowed and vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.
Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how much he feared him in that moment. But under his fear it is obvious that there was lively resentment. He went straight in quest of his mother, whose darling he was, to bear her the tale of the King's mood, and what he accounted, no doubt rightly, the cause of it.
“It is the work of that pestilential Huguenot admiral,” he announced, at the end of a long tirade, “It is always thus with him after he has seen Coligny.”
Catherine of Medicis considered. She was a fat, comfortable woman, with a thick nose, pinched lips, and sleepy eyes.
“Charles,” she said at length, in her monotonous, emotionless voice, “is a weathercock that turns with every wind that blows upon him. You should know him by now.” And she yawned, so that one who did not know her and her habit of perpetually yawning might have supposed that she was but indifferently interested.
They were alone together in the intimate little tapestried room she called her oratory. She half sat, half reclined upon a couch of rose brocade. Anjou stood over by the window, his back to it, so that his pale face was in shadow. He considered his beautiful hands, which he was reluctant to lower, lest the blood should flow into them and mar their white perfection.
“The Admiral's influence over him is increasing,” he complained, “and he uses it to lessen our own.”
“Do I not know it?” came her dull voice.
“It is time to end it,” said Anjou passionately, “before he ends us. Your influence grows weaker every day and the Admiral's stronger. Charles begins to take sides with him against us. We shall have him a tool of the Huguenot party before all is done. Ah, mon Dieu! You should have seen him leaning upon the shoulder of that old parpaillot, calling him 'my father,' and protesting himself his devoted friend 'body and soul, heart and bowels,' in his own words. And when I seek him afterwards, he scowls and snarls at me, and fingers his dagger as if he would have it in my throat. It is plain to see upon what subject the old scoundrel entertained him.” And again he repeated, more fiercely than before: “It is time to end it!”
“I know,” she said, ever emotionless before so much emotion. “And it shall be ended. The old assassin should have been hanged years ago for guiding the hand that shot Francois de Guise. Daily he becomes a greater danger, to Charles, to ourselves, and to France. He is embroiling us with Spain through this Huguenot army he is raising to go and fight the battles of Calvinism in Flanders. A fine thing that. Ah, per Dio!” For a moment her voice was a little warmed and quickened. “Catholic France at war with Catholic Spain for the sake of Huguenot Flanders!” She laughed shortly. Then her voice reverted to its habitual sleepy level. “You are right. It is time to end it. Coligny is the head of this rebellious beast. If we cut off the head, perhaps the beast will perish. We will consult the Duke of Guise.” She yawned again. “Yes, the Duke of Guise will be ready to lend us his counsel and his aid. Decidedly we must get rid of the Admiral.”
That was on Monday, August 18th of that year 1572, and such was the firm purpose and energy of that fat and seemingly sluggish woman, that within two days all necessary measures were taken, and Maurevert, the assassin, was at his post in the house of Vilaine, in the Cloisters of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, procured for the purpose by Madame de Nemours, who bore the Admiral a mortal hatred.
It was not, however, until the following Friday that Maurevert was given the opportunity of carrying out the task to which he had been hired. On that morning, as the Admiral was passing, accompanied by a few gentlemen of his household, returning from the Louvre to his house in the Rue Betisy, the assassin did his work. There was a sudden arquebusade from a first-floor window, and a bullet smashed two fingers of the Admiral's right hand, and lodged itself in the muscles of his left arm.
With his maimed and bleeding hand he pointed to the window whence the shot had been fired, bidding his gentlemen to force a way into the house and take the assassin. But whilst they were breaking in at the front, Maurevert was making his escape by the back, where a horse waited for him, and, though pursued, he was never overtaken.
News of the event was instantly borne to the King. It found him at tennis with the Duke of Guise and the Admiral's son-in-law, Teligny.
“In this assassin's work, Sire,” said the blunt gentleman whom Coligny had sent, “the Admiral desires you to see the proof of the worth of the agreement between himself and Monsieur de Guise that followed upon the treaty of peace of Saint-Germain.”
The Duke of Guise drew himself stiffly up, but said no word. The King, livid with rage, looked at him balefully a moment, then to vent some of his fury he smashed his racket against the wall.
“God's Blood!” he cried, mouthing horribly. “Am I then never to have rest?” He flung away the broken remnants of his racket, and went out cursing. Questioning the messenger further, he learnt that the shot had been fired from the house of Vilaine, a sometime tutor to the Duke of Guise, and that the horse upon which the assassin had fled had been held for him by a groom in the Guise livery.
Meanwhile the Duke and Monsieur de Teligny had gone their ways with no word spoken between them—Guise to shut himself up in his hotel and assemble his friends, Teligny to repair at once to his father-in-law.
At two o'clock in the afternoon, in response to an urgent request from the Admiral, the King went to visit him, accompanied by the Queen-Mother, by his brothers Anjou and Alencon, and a number of officers and courtiers. The royal party saw nothing of the excitement which had been prevailing in the city ever since the morning's event, an excitement which subsided at their approach. The King was gloomy, resentful, and silent, having so far refused to discuss the matter with any one, denying audience even to his mother. Catherine and Anjou were vexed by the miscarriage of the affair, anxious and no less silent than the King.
They found the Admiral awaiting them, calm and composed. The famous Ambroise Pare had amputated the two broken fingers, and had dealt with the wound in the arm. But although Coligny might be considered to have escaped lightly, and not to be in any danger, a rumour was abroad that the bullet was poisoned; and neither the Admiral nor his people seem to have rejected the possibility. One suspects, indeed, that capital was made out of it. It was felt, perhaps, that thus should the Admiral maintain a greater influence with the King. For in any uncertainty as to whether Coligny would live or die, the King's feelings must be more deeply stirred than if he knew that the wound carried no peril to life.
Followed closely by his mother and his brothers, Charles swept through the spacious ante-chamber, thronged now with grim-faced, resentful Huguenot gentlemen, and so entered the room where Coligny reclined upon a day bed near the window. The Admiral made shift to rise, but this the King hurried forward to prevent.
“Rest yourself, my dear father!” he cried, in accents of deep concern. “Heart of God! What is this they have done to you? Assure me, at least, that your life is safe, or, by the Mass, I'll—”
“I hold my life from God,” the Admiral replied gravely, “and when He requires it of me I will yield it up. That is nothing.”
“Nothing? God's Blood! Nothing? The hurt is yours, my father, but the outrage mine; and I swear to you, by the Blood and the Death, that I will take such a vengeance as shall never be forgotten!”
Thereupon he fell into such a storm of imprecation and blasphemy that the Admiral, a sincerely devout, God-fearing heretic, shuddered to hear him.
“Calm, Sire!” he begged at last, laying his sound hand upon the King's velvet sleeve. “Be calm and listen, for it is not to speak of myself, of these wounds, or of the wrong done me, that I have presumed to beg you to visit me. This attempt to murder me is but a sign of the evil that is stirring in France to sap your authority and power. But—” He checked and looked at the three who stood immediately behind the King. “What I have to say is, if you will deign to listen, for your private ear.”
The King jerked round in a fashion peculiar to him; his every action was abrupt and spasmodic. He eyed his mother and brothers shiftily. It was beyond his power to look any one directly in the face.
“Outside!” he commanded, waving an impatient hand almost in their faces. “Do you hear? Leave me to talk with my father the Admiral.”
The young dukes fell back at once, ever in dread of provoking the horrible displays of passion that invariably followed upon any resistance of his feeble will. But the sluggish Catherine was not so easily moved.
“Is Monsieur de Coligny strong enough, do you think, to treat of affairs at present? Consider his condition, I beg,” she enjoined in her level voice.
“I thank you for your consideration, madame,” said the Admiral, the ghost of an ironic smile about his lips. “But I am strong enough, thank God! And even though my strength were less than it is, it would be more heavily taxed by the thought that I had neglected my duty to His Majesty than it ever could be by the performance of that duty.”
“Ha! You hear?” snapped the King. “Go, then; go!”
They went, returning to the ante-chamber to wait until the audience should conclude. The three stood there in the embrasure of a window that looked out upon the hot, sunlit courtyard. There, as Anjou himself tells us, they found themselves hemmed about by some two hundred sullen, grim-faced gentlemen and officers of the Admiral's party, who eyed them without dissembling their hostility, who preserved a silence that was disturbed only by the murmurs of their constant whisperings, and who moved to and fro before the royal group utterly careless of the proper degree of deference and respect.
Isolated thus in that hostile throng, Catherine and her sons became more and more uneasy, so that, as the Queen-Mother afterwards confessed, she was never in any place where her tarrying was attended by so much fear, or her departure thence by so much pleasure.
It was this fear that spurred her at last to put an end to that secret conference in the room beyond. She did it in characteristic manner. In the most complete outward composure, stifling a yawn as she went, she moved deliberately across to the door, her sons following, rapped shortly on the panel, and entered without waiting to be bidden.
The King, who was standing by the Admiral's side, wheeled sharply at the sound of the opening door. His eyes blazed with sudden anger when he beheld his mother, but she was the first to speak.
“My son,” she said, “I am concerned for the poor Admiral. He will have the fever if you continue to permit him to weary himself with affairs at present. It is not to treat him as a friend to prolong this interview. Let business wait until he is recovered, which will be the sooner if he is given rest at present.”
Coligny stroked his white beard in silence, while the King flared out, striding towards her:
“Par la Mort Dieu! What is this sudden concern for the Admiral?”
“Not sudden, my son,” she answered in her dull voice, her eyes intent upon him, with something magnetic in their sleepy glance that seemed to rob him of half his will. “None knows more accurately than I the Admiral's precise, value to France.”
Anjou behind her may have smiled at that equivocal phrase.
“God's Bowels! Am I King, or what am I?”
“It ill becomes a king to abuse the strength of a poor wounded subject,” she returned, her eyes ever regarding him steadily. “Come, Charles. Another day, when the Admiral shall have recovered more fully, you may continue this discourse. Come now.”
His anger was subdued to mere sullenness, almost infantile in its outward petulant expression. He attempted to meet her glance, and he was completely lost.
“Perhaps... Ah, Ventre Dieu, my mother is right! Let the matter rest, then, my father. We will talk of it again as soon as you are well.”
He stepped up to the couch, and held out his hand.
Coligny took it, and his eyes looked up wistfully into the weak young face of his King.
“I thank you, Sire, for coming and for hearing me. Another day, if I am spared, I may tell you more. Meanwhile, bear well in mind what I have said already. I have no interests in this world but your own, Sire.” And he kissed the royal hand in farewell.
Not until they were back in the Louvre did the Queen attempt to break upon the King's gloomy abstraction, to learn—as learn she must—the subject of the Admiral's confidential communication.
Accompanied by Anjou, she sought him in his cabinet, nor would she be denied. He sat at his writing-table, his head sunken between his shoulders, his receding chin in his cupped palms. He glared at the pair as they entered, swore savagely, and demanded their business with him.
Catherine sat down with massive calm. Anjou remained standing beside and slightly behind her, leaning upon the back of her tall chair.
“My son,” she said bluntly, “I have come to learn what passed between you and Coligny.”
“What passed? What concern is that of yours?”
“All your concerns are mine,” she answered tranquilly. “I am your mother.”
“And I am your king!” he answered, banging the table. “And I mean to be king!”
“By the grace of God and the favour of Monsieur de Coligny,” she sneered, with unruffled calm.
“What's that?” His mouth fell open, and his eyes stared. A crimson flush overspread his muddy complexion. “What's that?”
Her dull glance met and held his own whilst calmly she repeated her sneering words.
“And that is why I have come to you,” she added. “If you are unable to rule without guidance, I must at least do what I can so that the guidance shall not be that of a rebel, of one who guides you to the end that he may master you.”
“Master me!” he screamed. He rose in his indignation and faced her. But his glance, unable to support her steady eyes, faltered and fell away. Foul oaths poured from his royal lips. “Master me!” he repeated.
“Aye—master you,” she answered him. “Master you until the little remnant of your authority shall have been sapped; until you are no more than a puppet in the hands of the Huguenot party, a roi faineant, a king of straw.”
“By God, madame, were you not my mother—”
“It is because I am your mother that I seek to save you.”
He looked at her again, but again his glance faltered. He paced the length of the room and back, mouthing and muttering. Then he came to stand, leaning on the prie-dieu, facing her.
“By God's Death, madame, since you demand to know what the Admiral said, you shall. You prove to me that what he told me was no more than true. He told me that a king is only recognized in France as long as he is a power for good or ill over his subjects; that this power, together with the management of all State affairs, is slipping, by the crafty contrivances of yourself and Anjou there, out of my hands into your own; that this power and authority which you are both stealing from me may one day be used against me and my kingdom. And he bade me be on my guard against you both and take my measures. He gave me this counsel, madame, because he deemed it his duty as one of my most loyal and faithful servants at the point of death, and—”
“The shameless hypocrite!” her dull, contemptuous voice interrupted him. “At the point of death! Two broken fingers and a flesh-wound in the arm and he represents himself as in articulo mortis that he may play upon you, and make you believe his lies.”
Her stolidity of manner and her logic, ponderous and irresistible, had their effect. His big, green eyes seemed to dilate, his mouth fell open.
“If—” he began, and checked, rapped out an oath, and checked again. “Are they lies, madame?” he asked slowly.
She caught the straining note of hope in that question of his—a hope founded upon vanity, the vanity to be king in fact, as well as king in name. She rose.
“To ask me that—me, your mother—is to insult me. Come, Anjou.”
And on that she departed, craftily, leaving her suggestion to prey upon his mind.
But once alone in her oratory with Anjou, her habitual torpor was sloughed away. For once she quivered and crimsoned and raised her voice, whilst for once her sleepy eyes kindled and flashed as she inveighed against Coligny and the Huguenots.
For the moment, however, there was no more to be done. The stroke had failed; Coligny had survived the attempt upon his life, and there was danger that on the recoil the blow might smite those who had launched it. But on the morrow, which was Saturday, things suddenly assumed a very different complexion.
That great Catholic leader, the powerful, handsome Duke of Guise, who, more than suspected of having inspired the attempted assassination, had kept his hotel since yesterday, now sought the Queen-Mother with news of what was happening in the city. Armed bands of Huguenot nobles were riding through the streets, clamouring:
“Death to the assassins of the Admiral! Down with the Guisards!”
And, although a regiment of Gardes Francaises had been hastily brought to Paris to keep order, the Duke feared grave trouble in a city which the royal wedding had filled with Huguenot gentlemen and their following. Then, too, there were rumours that the Huguenots were arming everywhere—rumours which, whether true or not, were, under the circumstances, sufficiently natural and probable to be taken seriously.
Leaving Guise in her oratory, and summoning her darling Anjou, Catherine at once sought the King. She may have believed the rumours, and she may even have stated them as facts beyond dispute so as to strengthen and establish her case against Gaspard de Coligny.
“King Gaspard I,” she told him, “is already taking his measures. The Huguenots are arming; officers have been dispatched into the provinces to levy troops. The Admiral has ordered the raising of ten thousand horse in Germany, and another ten thousand Swiss mercenaries in the Cantons.”
He stared at her vacuously. Some such rumour had already reached him, and he conceived that here was definite confirmation of it.
“You may determine now who are your friends, who your loyal servants,” she told him. “How is so much force to be resisted in the state in which you find yourself? The Catholics exhausted, and weary as they are by a civil war in which their king was of little account to them, are going to arm so as to offer what resistance they can without depending upon you. Thus, within your State you will have two great parties under arms, neither of which can be called your own. Unless you stir yourself, and quickly, unless you choose now between friends and foes, you will find yourself alone, isolated, in grave peril, without authority or power.”
He sank overwhelmed to a chair, and took his head in his hands, cogitating. When next he looked at her there was positive fear in his great eyes, a fear evoked by contemplation of the picture which her words had painted for him.
He looked from her to Anjou.
“What then?” he asked. “What then? How is the danger to be averted?”
“By a simple stroke of the sword,” she answered calmly. “Slice off at a blow the head of this beast of rebellion, this hydra of heresy.”
He huddled back, horror in his eyes. His hands slid slowly along the carved arms of his chair, and clenched the ends so tightly that his knuckles looked like knobs of marble.
“Kill the Admiral?” he said slowly.
“The Admiral and the chief Huguenot leaders,” she said, much in the tone she might have used, were it a matter of wringing the necks of a dozen capons.
“Ah, ca! Par la Mort Dieu!” He heaved himself up, raging. “Thus would your hatred of him be served. Thus would you—”
Coolly she sliced into his foaming speech.
“Not I—not I!” she said. “Do nothing upon my advice. Summon your Council. Send for Tavannes, Biragues, Retz, and the others. Consult with them. They are your friends; you trust and believe in them. When they know the facts, see if their counsel will differ from your mother's. Send for them; they are in the Louvre now.”
He looked at her a moment.
“Very well,” he said; and reeled to the door, bawling hoarsely his orders.
They came, one by one—the Marshal de Tavannes, the Duke of Retz, the Duke of Nevers, the Chancellor de Biragues, and lastly the Duke of Guise, upon whom the King scowled a jealous hatred that was now fully alive.
The window, which overlooked the quay and the river, stood open to admit what air might be stirring on that hot day of August.
Charles sat at his writing-table, sullen and moody, twining a string of beads about his fingers. Catherine occupied the chair over beyond the table, Anjou sitting near her on a stool. The others stood respectfully awaiting that the King should make known his wishes. The shifty royal glance swept over them from under lowering brows; then it rested almost in challenge upon his mother.
“Tell them,” he bade her curtly.
She told them what already she had told her son, relating all now with greater detail and circumstance. For some moments nothing was heard in that room but the steady drone of her unemotional voice. When she had finished, she yawned and settled herself to hear what might be answered.
“Well,” snapped the King, “you have heard. What do you advise? Speak out!”
Nevers was the first to answer.
“There is no other way,” he said stiffly, “but that which Her Majesty advises. The danger is grave. If it is to be averted, action must be prompt and effective.”
Tavannes clasped his hands behind him and said much the same, as did presently the Chancellor.
Twisting and untwisting his chaplet of beads about his long fingers, his eyes averted, the King heard each in turn. Then he looked up. His glance, deliberately ignoring Guise, settled upon the Duke of Retz, who held aloof.
“And you, Monsieur le Marechal, what is your counsel?”
Retz drew himself up, as if bracing himself to meet opposing forces. He was a little pale, but quite composed.
“If there is a man whom I should hate,” he said, “it is this Gaspard de Coligny, who has defamed me and all my family by the foul accusations he has put abroad. But I will not,” he added firmly, “take vengeance upon my enemies at the expense of my king and master. I cannot counsel a course so disastrous to Your Majesty and the whole kingdom. Did we act as we have been advised, Sire, can you doubt that we should be taxed—and rightly taxed in view of the treaty that has been signed—with perfidy and disloyalty?”
Dead silence followed that bombshell of opposition, coming from a quarter whence it was least expected. For Catherine and Anjou had confidently counted upon the Duke's hatred of Coligny to ensure his support of their designs.
A little colour crept into the pale cheeks of the King. His glance kindled out of its sullenness. He was as one who sees sudden hope amid despair.
“That is the truth,” he said. “Messieurs, and you, madame my mother, you have heard the truth. How do you like it?”
“Monsieur de Retz is deceived by an excess of loyalty,” said Anjou quickly. “Because he bears a personal enmity to the Admiral, he conceives that it would hurt his honour to speak otherwise. It must savour to him, as he has said, of using his king and master to avenge his own personal wrongs. We can respect Monsieur de Retz's view, although we hold it mistaken.”
“Will Monsieur de Retz tell us what other course lies open?” quoth the bluff Tavannes.
“Some other course must be found,” cried the King, rousing himself. “It must be found, do you hear? I will not have you touch the life of my friend the Admiral. I will not have it—by the Blood!”
A hubbub followed, all speaking at once, until the King banged the table, and reminded them that his cabinet was not a fish-market.
“I say that there is no other way,” Catherine insisted. “There cannot be two kings in France, nor can there be two parties. For your own safety's sake, and for the safety of your kingdom, I beseech you so to contrive that in France there be but one party with one head—yourself.”
“Two kings in France?” he said. “What two kings?”
“Yourself and Gaspard I—King Coligny, the King of the Huguenots.”
“He is my subject—my faithful, loyal subject,” the King protested, but with less assurance.
“A subject who raises forces of his own, levies taxes of his own, garrisons Huguenot cities,” said Biragues. “That is a very dangerous type of subject, Sire.”
“A subject who forces you into war with Protestant Flanders against Catholic Spain,” added the blunt Tavannes.
“Forces me?” roared the King, half rising, his eyes aflash. “That is a very daring word.”
“It would be if the proof were absent. Remember, Sire, his very speech to you before you permitted him to embark upon preparations for this war. 'Give us leave,' he said, 'to make war in Flanders, or we shall be compelled to make war upon yourself.'”
The King winced and turned livid. Sweat stood in beads upon his brow. He was touched in his most sensitive spot. That speech of Coligny's was of all things the one he most desired to forget. He twisted the chaplet so that the beads bit deeply into his fingers.
“Sire,” Tavannes continued, “were I a king, and did a subject so address me, I should have his head within the hour. Yet worse has happened since, worse is happening now. The Huguenots are arming. They ride arrogantly through the streets of your capital, stirring up rebellion. They are here in force, and the danger grows acute and imminent.”
Charles writhed before them. He mopped his brow with a shaking hand.
“The danger—yes. I see that. I admit the danger. But Coligny—”
“Is it to be King Gaspard or King Charles?” rasped the voice of Catherine.
The chaplet snapped suddenly in the King's fingers. He sprang to his feet, deathly pale.
“So be it!” he cried. “Since it is necessary to kill the Admiral, kill him, then. Kill him!” he screamed, in a fury that seemed aimed at those who forced this course upon him. “Kill him—but see to it also that at the same time you kill every Huguenot in France, so that not one shall be left to reproach me. Not one, do you hear? Take your measures and let the thing be done at once.” And on that, his face livid and twitching, his limbs shaking, he flung out of the room and left them.
It was all the warrant they required, and they set to work at once there in the King's own cabinet, where he had left them. Guise, who had hitherto been no more than a silent spectator, assumed now the most active part. Upon his own shoulders he took the charge of seeing the Admiral done to death.
The remainder of the day and a portion of the evening were spent in concerting ways and means. They assured themselves of the Provost of the merchants of Paris, of the officers of the Gardes Francaises and the three thousand Swiss, of the Captains of the quarters and other notoriously factious persons who could be trusted as leaders. By ten o'clock at night all preparations were made and it was agreed that the ringing of the bell of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois for matins was to be the signal for the massacre.
A gentleman of the Admiral's household taking his way homeward that night passed several men bearing sheaves of pikes upon their shoulders, and never suspected whom these weapons were to arm. He met several small companies of soldiers marching quietly, their weapons shouldered, their matches glowing, and still he suspected nothing, whilst in one quarter he stopped to watch a man whose behaviour seemed curious, and discovered that he was chalking a white cross upon the doors of certain houses.
Meeting soon afterwards another man with a bundle of weapons on his shoulder, the intrigued Huguenot gentleman asked him bluntly what he carried and whither he went.
“It is for the divertissement at the Louvre tonight,” he was answered.
But in the Louvre the Queen-Mother and the Catholic leaders, the labours of preparation ended, were snatching a brief rest. Between two and three o'clock in the morning Catherine and Anjou repaired again to the King's cabinet. They found him waiting there, his face haggard and his eyes fevered.
He had spent a part of the evening at billiards, and among the players had been La Rochefoucauld, of whom he was fond, and who had left him with a jest at eleven o'clock, little dreaming that it was for the last time.
The three of them crossed to the window overlooking the river. They opened it, and peered out fearfully. Even Catherine trembled now that the hour approached. The air was fresh and cool, swept clean by the stirring breeze of the dawn, whose first ghostly gleams were already in the sky. Suddenly, somewhere near at hand, a pistol cracked. The noise affected them oddly. The King fell into an ague and his teeth chattered audibly. Panic seized him.
“By the Blood, it shall not be! It shall not be!” he cried suddenly.
He looked at his mother and his brother and they looked at him; ghastly were the faces of all three, their eyes wide and staring with horror.
Charles swore in his terror that he would cancel all commands. And since Catherine and Anjou made no attempt to hinder him, he summoned an officer and bade him seek out the Duke of Guise at once and command him to stay his hand.
The messenger eventually found the Duke in the courtyard of the Admiral's house, standing over the Admiral's dead body, which his assassins had flung down from the bedroom window. Guise laughed, and stirred the head of the corpse with his foot, answering that the message came too late. Even as he spoke the great bell of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois began to ring for matins.
The royal party huddled at that window of the Louvre heard it at the same moment, and heard, as if in immediate answer, shots of arquebus and pistol, cries and screams near at hand, and then, gradually swelling from a murmur, the baying of the fierce multitude. Other bells gave tongue, until from every steeple in Paris the alarm rang out. The red glow from thousands of torches flushed the heavens with a rosy tint as of dawn, the air grew heavy with the smell of pitch and resin.
The King, clutching the sill of the window, poured out a stream of blasphemy from between his chattering teeth. Then the hubbub rose suddenly near at hand. The neighbourhood of the Louvre was populous with Huguenots, and into it now poured the excited Catholic citizens and soldiers. Soon the quay beneath the palace windows presented the fiercest spectacle of any quarter, of Paris.
Half-clad men, women, and children fled screaming before the assassins, until they were checked by the chains that everywhere had been placed across the streets. Some sought the river, hoping to find a way of escape. But with Satanic foresight, the boats usually moored there had been conveyed to the other side. Thus some hundreds of Huguenots were brought to bay, and done to death under the very eyes of the King who had unleashed this horror. Doors were crashed open, flames rose to heaven, men and women were shot down under the palace wall, bodies were flung from windows, and on every side—in the words of D'Aubigne—the blood now flowed, seeking the river.
The King watched a while, screams and curses pouring from his lips to be lost in the horrible uproar. He turned, perhaps to upbraid his mother and his brother, but found that they were no longer at his side. Behind him in the room a page was crouching, watching him with a white, horrified face.
Suddenly the King laughed—it was the fierce, hysterical laugh of a madman. His eyes fell on the arquebuses flanking the picture of the Mother of Mercy. He took one of them down, then caught the boy by the collar of his doublet and dragged him forward to the window.
“Hither, and load for me!” he bade him, between peals of his terrible laughter. Then he levelled the weapon across the sill of the window. “Parpaillots! Parpaillots!” he screamed. “Kill! Kill!” and he discharged the arquebus into a fleeing group of Huguenots.
Five days later, the King—who by now had thrown the blame of the whole affair, with its slaughter of some two thousand Huguenots, upon the Guises and their hatred of Coligny—rode out to Montfaucon to behold the decapitated body of the Admiral, which hung from the gallows in chains. A courtier of a poor but obtrusive wit leaned towards him.
“The Admiral becomes noisome, I think,” he said.
The King's green eyes considered him, his lips curling grimly.
“The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet,” he said.
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