The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

Cornelia, pale and motionless like a statue of sorrow, her arms crossed over her palpitating bosom, and her face bathed in tears, remained in mute consternation until this moment. The girl now took two steps towards her betrothed and said to him in a trembling voice:

"Antonicq, to-morrow we were to be married – people in mourning do not marry. From this instant I wear mourning for our brothers, massacred on St. Bartholomew's night! A woman owes obedience to her husband, according to our laws – iniquitous, degrading laws! I wish to remain free until after the war."

"Cornelia, the hour of sacrifices has sounded," answered Antonicq with a trembling voice; "my courage shall vie with yours."

"We have paid our tribute to human weakness," observed Odelin's widow, smothering a sob; "let us now bravely face the magnitude of the disaster that has smitten our cause. Louis, we listen to your account of St. Bartholomew's night."

"When a few weeks ago I left for Paris, I concluded I would, in passing through Poitiers, Angers and Orleans, visit several of our pastors in order to ascertain whether they also shared our apprehensions. Some I found completely set at ease by the loyal execution of the last edict, above all by the certainty of the marriage of Henry of Bearn with the sister of Charles IX. They looked upon this as a pledge of the good intentions of the King, and of the end of the religious conflicts. Other pastors, on the contrary, felt vaguely uneasy. Being convinced that Joan of Albert was poisoned by Catherine De Medici, they saw with no little apprehension what they considered the heedless confidence that Admiral Coligny placed in the court. But in short, the vast majority of our brothers felt perfectly at ease.

"Immediately upon my arrival at Paris I proceeded to Bethisy Street, the residence of Admiral Coligny. I expressed to him the fears that agitated the Rochelois concerning his life, so precious to our cause, and their mistrust of Charles IX and his mother. The Admiral's answer was: 'The only thing that keeps me back at court is the almost positive prospect of Flanders and the Low Countries rising against the bloodthirsty tyranny of Philip II. Only the support of France could insure the success of the revolt. If those rich industrial provinces secede from Spain, they will be the promised land to our brothers. These will find there a refuge, not as to-day, behind the ramparts of a very few cities of safety, but either in the Walloon provinces, which will have become French territory under solid guarantees for their freedom, or in the Low Countries, which will be federated upon a republican plan, in imitation of the Swiss cantons, under the protectorate of the Prince of Nassau. By family tradition, and on principle, I am attached to the monarchic form of government. But I am well aware that many of our brothers, you of La Rochelle among them, shocked at the crimes of the reigning house, are strongly inclined towards a republic. To these, the federation of the Low Countries, should the same be established, will offer a form of government to their taste.' 'But, Admiral,' I replied, 'suppose our suspicions prove true, and the help that the King and his mother have so long been holding out the prospect of proves to be but a lure to hide some new trap?' 'I do not think so,' rejoined Admiral Coligny, 'although it may be. One must be ready for anything from Catherine De Medici and her son.' 'But,' I cried, 'Admiral, how can you, despite such doubts entertained by yourself, remain here at court, among your mortal enemies! Do you take no precautions to protect yourself against a possible, if not probable, act of treachery?' 'My friend,' was the Admiral's reply given in a grave and melancholy tone, 'for long years I have conducted that sort of war which, above all others, is the most frightful and atrocious – civil war. It inspires me with insurmountable horror. An uprising in Flanders and the Low Countries offers me the means of putting an end to the shedding of French blood and of securing a new and safe country to our brothers. It will be one way or the other – either the King's promises are sincere, or they are not. If they are I would consider it a crime to wreck through impatience or mistrust the success of a plan that promises so favorable a future to the Protestants.' 'And if the King should not be sincere,' I inquired, 'if his promises have no object other than to gain time to the end of insuring the success of some new and frightful treachery?' 'In that event, my friend, I shall be the victim of the treachery,' calmly answered Coligny. 'Is it my life they are after? I have long since offered it up as a sacrifice to God. Moreover, only day before yesterday, I declared to the King that, after the suppression of the revolt at Mons, as a consequence of which Lanoüe, my best friend, fell a prisoner into the hands of the Spaniards, France should no longer hesitate to give her support to the insurrection of the Low Countries against Philip II.' 'And what did the King say to that? Did he give you any guarantee of his honest intentions?' 'The King,' Coligny answered me, 'said this to me: "My good father, here are the nuptials of my sister Margot approaching; grant me only a week longer of pleasures and enjoyment, after which, I swear to you, by the word of a King, you and your friends will all be satisfied with me."'"

At this passage Louis Rennepont interrupted his narrative and cried with a shudder:

"Would you believe it, my friends, Charles IX addressed these ambiguous and perfidious words to Coligny on the 13th of August – and on the night of the 23rd the massacre of our brothers took place!"

"Oh, these Kings!" exclaimed Marcienne, raising her eyes to heaven. "These Kings! The sweat of our brows no longer suffices to slake their thirst. They are glutted with that – they now joke preparatorily to murder!"

"By my sister's death!" shouted the Franc-Taupin, furiously. "The Admiral must have been smitten with blindness. Acquainted as he was from a long and bitter experience with that tyrant whelp, that tiger cub, how is it he did not take warning from the double sense that the King's words carried! What imprudence!"

"Alas, far from it!" said Louis Rennepont. "In answer to the remarks I made to him, calling his attention to the suspiciousness of the King's words, a suspiciousness rendered all the more glaring by reason of the tyrant's character, the Admiral merely replied: 'If they are after my life, would they not long ago have killed me, in the course of these six months that I have been at court?' 'But monsieur,' I observed, 'it is not your life only that is threatened; they probably aim also at the lives of all our Protestant leaders. Our enemies rely upon your example, upon your presence at court, and upon the festivities of the marriage of Henry of Bearn, to attract our principal men to Paris – then to strike them all down at the giving of a signal, and to massacre the rest of our brothers all over France. Do you forget the scheme that Catherine De Medici talked over with the Jesuit Lefevre?' 'No, no, my friend,' he replied serenely, 'my heart and my judgment refuse to believe such a monstrous plan possible; it exceeds the bounds of human wickedness. The most reckless tyrants, whose names have caused the earth to grow pale, never dreamed of anything even remotely approaching such a horrible crime – it would be nameless!"

"That crime now has a name – it is called 'St. Bartholomew's Night'!" said Cornelia with a shudder. "What will be the name of the vengeance?"

"Mayhap the vengeance will be called the 'Siege of La Rochelle'!" answered Captain Mirant, the girl's father. "Our walls are strong, and resolute are our hearts."

"The war will be a bloody one!" interjected Master Barbot the boilermaker.

Louis Rennepont proceeded with his narrative: "I left Admiral Coligny, unable to awaken his suspicions. He went to his Chatillon home, spent two days in that retreat so beloved of him, and returned to Paris on the 17th of August, the eve of the marriage of Henry of Bearn and Princess Marguerite. The union of a Protestant Prince with a Catholic Princess, in which so many of us saw the end of the religious struggles, drew to Paris almost all the Protestant leaders. I shall mention, among those whom I visited, Monsieur La Rochefoucauld, Monsieur La Force, and brave Colonel Piles. Apprehending no treason, they all shared the expectations of Coligny with respect to the revolt in the Low Countries. The feeling of safety that prevailed among my brothers gained upon me also. The marriage of Henry of Bearn and Princess Marguerite took place on the 18th of this month. From that day to the 21st there was a perpetual round of splendid festivities and general merrymaking at court and in the city. I took up my lodgings at the sign of the Swan, on St. Thomas-of-the-Louvre Street, not far from the residence of Monsieur Coligny. The inn-keeper was of our people. On the 22d he came to my room at about nine in the morning and said to me with surprise not unmixed with alarm: 'Something strange is going on. I just learned that the provosts of each quarter of the city are going from house to house inquiring about the religion of the tenants, and noting down the Huguenots. The reason given is that a general census of the population is wanted. Subsequently,' the inn-keeper proceeded to say, 'the regiment of the Arquebusiers of the Guard entered Paris. Finally, I learn that last night a large number of arms, especially cutlasses and daggers, were transported to the City Hall. I received this information from my niece. She is a Catholic and a chamber maid of the Duchess of Nevers. The taking of a list of the Huguenots in town, the arrival of a whole regiment of Arquebusiers of the Guard, and finally the conveying of such large stores of arms to the City Hall, seem to me to foreshadow some plot against the Protestants. I wish you would notify the Admiral of these occurrences.' The inn-keeper's advice seemed wise to me. I hastened to Bethisy Street and knocked at the Admiral's house. He was not home. As was his habit, he had departed early in the morning to the Louvre. His old equerry Nicholas Mouche, to whom I imparted some of my information, seemed not a little startled. We agreed to proceed to the entrance of the palace and wait for the Admiral. We were passing by the cloister of St. Germain-L'Auxerois, where several houses were in the course of construction, when we caught sight of Coligny returning on foot and followed by two of his serving men. He was reading a letter, and walked slowly. We hastened our steps to meet him. Suddenly we were blinded by the flash of a firearm, fired from the ground floor window of one of the houses contiguous to the cloister. Nicholas Mouche rushed to his master, screaming: 'Help! The Admiral is assassinated! Help! Help!'"

A cry of horror leaped from the lips of all the members of the Lebrenn family, who followed breathlessly the report of Louis Rennepont. Captain Mirant exclaimed:

"Murder and treason! To kill that great man in such a way! Vengeance! Vengeance!"

"No," put in Louis Rennepont with a painful effort. "Monsieur Coligny, killed by a bullet, would at least have met a soldier's death. I followed close upon the heels of Nicholas Mouche and reached him at the moment when Coligny, pale but calm, pointed to the window from which the shot was fired, and said: 'The shot came from there.' The arquebus was loaded with two balls. One carried off the Admiral's left thumb, while the other lodged in his arm near the elbow. Weakened by the loss of blood, that ran profusely, Coligny said to Nicholas Mouche: 'If I leaned upon your arm I could walk to my house – proceed!' In fact, he walked home. Several Protestant officers happened to be not far behind. Upon learning of the crime that was committed, they forced their way into the house where the would-be assassin had lain in ambush. They were informed that he fled through a rear door, where a saddled horse, held by a page in the Guise livery, stood waiting for him. Their searches proved vain. No trace of the assassin could they find."

"The Guises! Always the Guisards, either directly guilty, or the accomplices of assassins!" exclaimed Odelin's widow with a shudder. "With how much blood have not those Lorrainian Princes reddened their hands since the butcheries of Vassy! But did Monsieur Coligny's wound prove fatal?"

"No, unfortunately for the Admiral – because the very next day – " Louis Rennepont broke off suddenly. "Do you want to know, mother, whether the Guises were accomplices in the attempted murder upon the Admiral? Yes, they had their hands in that fresh misdeed, at the instigation of the Queen-mother. And here a plot begins to unroll itself, the deep villainy of which would seem incredible if Catherine De Medici and her son were not known. Presently I shall tell you from whom I have my information; it is reliable. In line with the conversation which she had with the Jesuit Lefevre, and which Anna Bell overheard, Catherine De Medici hated and feared the Guises no less than she did the Admiral. Her scheme was to cause the Admiral to be assassinated by the Guises; then to rid herself of them through the Protestants; and finally to rid herself of the Protestants by the King's soldiers. Does such an infernal combination seem impracticable to you? Well, it came near succeeding. This was the plot: The Guises continued to slander the Admiral by accusing him of having suborned Poltrot who killed Francis of Guise at the siege of Orleans; the old family hatred burned as implacable as ever. On the day after the marriage of Henry of Bearn, the Queen and her son Charles IX said with much unction to Henry of Guise that, in order to preserve the confidence of the Huguenots and the Admiral, it was necessary to seem to give him a pledge of reconciliation, to request of him that the flames of hatred, so long burning in the breasts of the two families, be extinguished, and to offer him the hand of friendship. All the more reassured by the cordial advance, the Admiral was expected to be thrown still more off his guard, and his assassination was considered all the more certain! The Queen offered for the deed a man after her own and the King's heart – Maurevert, surnamed the 'King's Killer,' since his assassination of brave Mouy, a crime for which the felon received the collar of the Order of St. Michael. The Queen's advice was relished. Young Guise gave his hand to the old Admiral, and two days later Monsieur Coligny, on his return from the Louvre, received a load of arquebus shot from – Maurevert!"

Louis Rennepont stopped for a moment, and then proceeded amid the profound silence of the family:

"By wounding, instead of killing Coligny, the 'King's Killer' ruined the project of the Queen and her son. They had counted upon the murder of the Admiral to incite a great tumult in Paris; their agents were to scatter among the mob the information that the heinous murder was the work of the Guisards; the exasperated Huguenots were expected to run to arms and avenge Coligny's death with the massacre of the whole Guise family and their partisans; that done, the royal troops were in turn to overwhelm the Protestants, on the pretext of being guilty of a flagrant breach of the edict of pacification. The last massacre was to extend from Paris all over France, under the guise of a vindication of the outraged edict of pacification. Machiavelli could not have plotted better. The arquebus shot of Maurevert would have rid Charles IX at once of Coligny, the Guises and the Protestants. The 'King's Killer' having missed fire, another course had to be pursued, and, above all, the reformers had to be convinced that Maurevert's attempt was merely an act of individual vengeance. Accordingly Charles IX hastened to the Admiral's residence. The tiger-cub wept. He called the old Admiral his 'good father.' He promised, 'upon the word of a King, however high the station of the would-be murderers, they should not escape just punishment.' I was an eye-witness of those tears and royal protestations; many of our brothers, myself among them, remained near the bed where Coligny lay while awaiting the surgeon. We were present at that interview with Charles IX – "

"Then you saw him, Louis, that tiger with the face of a man?" asked Cornelia with a curiosity born of disgust and horror. "How does the monster look?"

"Pale and atrabilious of face, with dull, glassy eyes, and a sleepy look, as if the fervent Catholic and crowned murderer were ever dreaming of crime," answered Louis Rennepont. "Now watch the sanguinary craftiness of that pupil of Machiavelli's, to whom neither pledge nor oath is aught but a more effective form of perfidy. Would you believe it, that after having expressed sympathy for the wounds of his 'good father,' and after having pledged his royal word to secure justice, the first words of Charles IX were: 'I shall forthwith issue orders to close the gates of Paris, so that none shall leave the city; the murderer will not be able to flee. Moreover, I authorize, or rather I strongly urge the Protestant seigneurs, to whom I have offered the hospitality of the Louvre during the nuptial festivals of my sister Margot, to summon their friends near them for safeguard.'"

"I perceive the trick of the tiger," broke in Captain Mirant. "By closing the gates of Paris he prevented the escape of the Huguenots whom he had consigned to death!"

"No doubt," added Master Barbot the boilermaker, "the same as by inducing the Protestant seigneurs, who were lodged at the Louvre, to summon their friends to them, Charles IX only aimed at having them more ready at hand for his butchers!"

"The issue proved that such were the secret designs of the King," replied Louis Rennepont. "But haste was urgent. If tidings of the attempted murder of the Admiral reached the provinces, the Huguenots would be put on their guard. The Queen assembled her council that very night, and presided at its meeting. These were the members at the council: The King Charles IX; his brother, the Duke of Anjou; the Bastard of Angouleme; the Duke of Nevers; Birago and Gondi, the Queen's messengers of evil. It was decided that the butchery should start at early dawn. The provosts of the merchants, all exemplary Catholics, had, under pretext of taking a general census, drawn up full lists of all the Huguenots in the city. Their places of residence being thus accurately indicated, the assassins would know exactly where to go. The next question that came up was whether Henry of Bearn also was to be killed. Catherine De Medici and her son, the King, were strongly in favor, and urged the necessity of the murder. The other councillors, however, more scrupulous than their monarchs, objected that the whole world would be shocked at the assassination of a Prince whose throat was cut, so to say, under the very eyes of the mother and brother of his wife. Moreover, the young Prince was lightheaded, unsteady of purpose, they thought, and without any rooted religious belief. It would be easy, they concluded, either by means of promises or threats to cause him to abjure the Reformed religion. The death of the Prince of Condé was also long discussed. Twice the decision was in favor. But his brother-in-law, the Duke of Nevers, saved him by guaranteeing the Prince's abjuration. For the rest, the lad, only the rallying ground of the Huguenots and without personal valor, inspired but little fear, especially if compared with Coligny. Towards one o'clock in the morning, the young Duke of Guise was summoned to the Louvre and introduced to the council. The principal leadership of the carnage was offered to and accepted by him. A strange thing happened. At the last moment, Charles IX was assailed by some slight qualms of conscience at the thought of the murder of the Admiral, the old man whom that very morning he had addressed with the title of 'my good father.' But the King's hesitance was short-lived. His last words were: 'By the death of God! Seeing you think the Admiral should be killed, I will it, too; but I demand that all the Huguenots be killed, all, to the last one, that there may not be one left alive to reproach me with the Admiral's death'!"

"Oh, just God!" exclaimed Odelin's widow, raising her hands to heaven. "Since you consented to the unheard-of deed, Oh, God of Vengeance, You must have reserved some frightful punishment for him! Oh, You gave Your consent to that palace plot! to that nocturnal council! There Charles IX, armed with sovereign power, and certain of the ferocious obedience of his soldiers and his minions, like an assassin in ambush in the edge of a forest, laid in the dark the infamous, bloody and cowardly trap into which, when they awoke, so many of our brothers, who went to sleep confiding in the law, in their right and in the oath of that Prince, fell to their death! How many times did he not swear in the presence of God and man to respect the edict of peace! Yes, You allowed those horrors, O, God of Vengeance, to the end that this Frankish royalty and the Roman Church, its eternal accomplice, soon may fall under the general execration that the massacre of St. Bartholomew will arouse! Death to Kings! Death to their infamous accomplices, the nobles and priests!"

The Lebrenn family joined with hearts and lips in the widow's imprecations. When the excitement again subsided Louis Rennepont proceeded:

"Before retiring that night to my inn, I walked through a large number of streets. At least in appearance they were quiet. I met many of our brothers. Alarmed at the attempted murder of the Admiral, several had tried to leave Paris. They found the gates rigorously closed by orders of Charles IX. Back at night in my inn, I did not find the keeper, upon whom I relied for further information. Broken with fatigue and agitated by vague fears, I threw myself in my clothes upon my bed and fell asleep. At about three in the morning I was awakened by my inn-keeper. He was trembling with terror. 'The death of all the Protestants of Paris is decreed,' he whispered to me; 'the massacre is to begin at daybreak. My niece, the chambermaid of the Duchess of Nevers, overheard some words about the plot; she hastened to warn me. I have notified all our brothers who are lodged here. They have all fled. Your only chance to escape the carnage is to join the first gang of the cut-throats whom you may run across; you must pretend to be of them; you may in that way be able to reach some place of safety. For a sign among themselves they have a white paper cross attached to their hats, and a white shirt sleeve slipped like an armlet over the sleeve of their coats. Their password is: "God and the King!" Flee! Flee! May the Lord protect you! Thanks to my niece I have a safe retreat in the palace of Nevers.' While the inn-keeper was giving me these last directions, there came through my window, which I had left open on that hot and sultry night of August, the measured tintinnabulation of the large bell in the tower of the palace. The sound seemed to leap strangely from the depths of the silence in which the city was shrouded. 'It is the signal for the massacre!' cried my inn-keeper, leaving the room precipitately and whispering his last warnings to me: 'Flee! You have not a minute to spare; my house is marked! It will be instantly assaulted by the butchers!'"

"Great God!" cried Theresa, Louis Rennepont's young wife, pressing her child distractedly to her breast, and unable to hold back her tears. And addressing her husband: "You are here, near us, safe and sound, poor friend! and yet I shiver. I weep at the thought of the cruel agonies that you must have undergone. Did you follow the inn-keeper's advice, and assume the signs of the Catholics?"

"It was my only safety. I cut a cross of white paper and stuck it in my hat; I cut off a shirt sleeve and thrust my right arm through it; I then sallied out into the street. It was still silent and deserted. But the funeral knell from all the Paris churches had by that time joined the clangor of the tower bell, which then was ringing at its loudest. Windows were thrown open. Little by little lights appeared in them."

"Malediction upon the people of Paris!" cried Odelin's widow. "It seems most of them were accomplices in the butchery!"

"Alas, yes, mother! To their eternal shame, the fact must be admitted; the people of Paris were the accomplices of Charles IX, and our butchers! The people and a considerable portion of the bourgeoisie, being drugged by the fanaticism of the monks, did take part in the massacre. Some, yielding to the fear of being suspected, obeyed the orders of the provosts, and placed lights at their windows at the sound of the first strokes of the bells that they heard. My first thought was to run to the residence of the Admiral and notify him of the projected butchery. As I entered Bethisy Street I saw men emerging from several houses; all carried white crosses in their hats and their arms in shirt sleeves. They brandished pikes, swords and cutlasses, and cried: 'God and the King! Kill! Kill all the Huguenots!' They then gathered into groups, drew themselves up before certain doors that bore the mark of a cross in white chalk, beat upon and broke them down, and rushed in yelling: 'Kill! Kill the Huguenots!'

"I was rushing towards the residence of the Admiral when I saw a battalion of Arquebusiers of the Guard turn into Bethisy Street. The troop was headed by the young Duke Henry of Guise, accompanied by his uncle Aumale and the Bastard of Angouleme, brother of Charles IX. All three were clad in war armor. Pages carrying lighted torches preceded them. Among the soldiers were interspersed a large number of Catholic cut-throats, recognizable by the signs which I also wore. I mixed with them. The crowd arrived before Coligny's residence. The soldiers knocked at the main door with the butts of their arquebuses. It was instantly opened. Despite the prompt obedience shown, all the serving-men of Coligny found in the corridor and the yard were promptly done to death. The Guises and the Bastard of Angouleme, surrounded by their pages, remained outside in front of the facade of the house at the foot of the porch, the stairs of which led to the vestibule. Duke Henry of Guise made a sign; instantly his equerry Besmes, followed by Captains Cosseins, Cardillac, Altain and Petrucci, rushed forward with a detachment of soldiers and dashed up the stairs to the first floor, on which the Admiral's room was. I realized the Admiral was lost, and remained unobserved below among the Catholics, where the details of the murder were soon reported. Awakened by the outcry of his servants, and the tumult on the street, the Admiral guessed the fate that awaited him. His faithful Nicholas Mouche and Pastor Merlin were with him. They had watched all night at his bedside. 'Our hour has come; let us commend our souls to God!' said Coligny, with which words he rose from his bed, threw a morning gown over his shoulders and knelt down. The minister and his old servant knelt down beside him. The three began to pray. The door was broken in. Besmes, the equerry of Henry of Guise, was the first to enter, sword in hand, leading in his captains. He walked straight to Coligny, who, having finished his prayer was rising from the floor serene and dignified. 'Is it you who are the Admiral?' shouted Besmes; 'Well, you shall die!' 'The will of God be done! Young man, you shorten my life only a few days,' answered Coligny. These were that great man's last words. Besmes seized him by the throat with one hand, and with the other thrust his sword through him. The old man sank on his knees. Captain Cardillac threw him down, and opened his throat with one slash of his dagger. The other officers despatched Merlin and Nicholas Mouche.

"I had remained below. There I witnessed an even more execrable scene. Only a minute or two after the murderers had rushed upstairs, the Duke of Guise stepped closer to the facade of the house and called out impatiently in a ringing voice: 'Well, Besmes! Is it done?' Thereupon a casement was thrown open on the first floor; the equerry appeared at the window holding his bloody sword in his hand, and answered: 'Yes, monseigneur! It is done! He is dead!' 'Then throw the corpse down to us that we may see it!' commanded Henry of Guise. Besmes vanished, and reappeared dragging, with the aid of Captain Cosseins, the corpse of Admiral Coligny; the two raised it – meseems I still behold the grey head of the venerable old man, pale and limp, as the body was pushed out of the window, with his lifeless arms swinging in space. Besmes and the captain made a final effort; the corpse was precipitated upon the pavement, where it rolled down at the feet of the Duke of Guise. Coligny was clad only in the morning gown that he had hurriedly put on. Thus half-naked and still warm he was hurled out of the window. The venerable head rebounded upon the cobblestones and reddened them with blood. The victim had fallen on his face. The Duke of Guise stooped down, and, aided by the Bastard of Angouleme, turned the corpse over on its back, wiped with his sash the blood that covered the Admiral's august visage, contemplated it for a moment with ferocious glee, and then kicked the white head with the tip of his boot, crying: 'At last! Dead at last – thoroughly dead!' The Duke then turned to his henchmen: 'Comrades, let us proceed with our work! The Pope wills it! the King so orders it!' Almost fainting with sickening horror and unable to move, I witnessed this cannibal scene – it was only the prelude for another and still more horrifying one. The Dukes of Guise and of Aumale and the Bastard of Angouleme departed with their soldiers from Monsieur Coligny's courtyard. Almost immediately the same was invaded by a band of men, women and children in rags. They were a troop hideous to look upon, as they brandished their sticks, butcher knives and iron bars, under the leadership of a Cordelier monk who held a jagged cutlass in one hand and a crucifix in the other, yelling at the top of his voice: 'God and the King!' The howlings of the mob kept time to the monk's yells. Two men with hang-dog looks carried torches before the monk. The moment that he recognized the corpse of our martyr, the Cordelier emitted a screech of infernal glee, threw himself upon the lifeless body of the Admiral, squatted down upon its chest, sawed at the neck with his cutlass, severed the head from the trunk, seized it by its grey locks, and held it up to the mob, crying in a resonant, though cracked voice: 'This is the share of the Holy Father! I shall send him Coligny's head to Rome!'[77 - It is certain that Admiral Coligny's head departed for Rome; whether it ever arrived there is not known. Mandelot, the Governor of Lyons, acknowledged receipt of a letter from Charles IX ordering the nobleman "to arrest the carrier of the head, and to take the same away from him." – Extracts from the correspondence of Mandelot, published by M. Paulin, Paris, 1845, p. 119.]– That monk," added Louis Rennepont in a tremulous voice, and answering a cry of execration that leaped from the hearts of his listeners, "that monk, O shame and O misfortune! – that monk was the assassin of Odelin! Oh, may God have pity upon us!"

"Fra Hervé!" exclaimed all the members of the Lebrenn family in chorus. A silence of terror and horror reigned in the armorer's hall.

"I wish to come quickly to an end with these monstrosities," proceeded Louis Rennepont, catching his voice. "After the tiger come the jackals, after the ferocious beasts the unclean ones. Hardly had Fra Hervé severed the Admiral's head from his trunk, amid the hideous acclamations of the ragged crew, when they fell upon the corpse. Its feet and hands were cut off. The entrails were torn out of the abdomen and were struggled for by the human jackals. The sacrilegious mutilations seemed to go beyond the boundaries of the horrible, and yet the limit was not reached. Women, veritable furies, pounced upon the bleeding limbs, and – but I dare say no more before mother, or before Cornelia, nor before you, my wife. The stentorian voice of Fra Hervé finally silenced the tumult and quelled the anthropophagous orgie. 'Brothers!' he cried, 'to the Pope I shall send the head of this Huguenot carrion, but let us carry the stripped carcass to the gibbet of Montfaucon! It is there that should be exposed the remains of the villain who has infested France with his heresy, and lacerated the bosom of our holy mother the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church!' 'To Montfaucon with the Huguenot carrion!' howled the ferocious band. A procession was improvised. Fra Hervé sheathed his cutlass, planted the Admiral's head on the point of a pike, and raised the trophy in one hand. In the other he waved aloft his crucifix, and, lighted by his two torch-bearers, headed the procession. The now shapeless remnants of the corpse were tied to a rope, a team of cut-throats harnessed to it, and the bloody lump was dragged through the gutters. The procession marched to the cry of 'To Montfaucon with the Huguenot carrion! God and the King!' At that moment, and despite the terror that held me rooted to the ground, my inn-keeper's last suggestions occurred to me. Montfaucon was situated outside of the walls of Paris. No doubt some city gate would be opened to the Cordelier's band. I joined it, in the hope of escaping from Paris. We left the courtyard of Monsieur Coligny's house. It was now broad day. Before proceeding to Montfaucon, Fra Hervé wished to exhibit his bloody trophy to the eyes of Charles IX and his mother. We directed our course to the Louvre. Other scenes of carnage were taking place there. The Protestant seigneurs and officers who came in the suite of the Princes of Bearn and Condé to participate in the wedding festivities of the King's sister, were lodged at the palace. Relying upon the royal hospitality, they were taken by surprise while asleep, dragged half naked to the courtyard, and there either brained or stabbed to death. Among others whom I recognized at a distance were Morge, Pardillan, St. Martin, besides the brave veterans Piles, Baudine and Puy-Vaud. They struggled in their shirts against the soldiers who beat them down with their halberds, and then stripped the corpses of their last shreds of clothing. The moanings, the imprecations of the victims, the streams of steaming blood through which we tramped, and that often reached our ankles, made my head reel. The butchers laid the corpses out in rows in front of the facade of the Louvre. The bodies were yet warm; many a bloody limb still seemed to palpitate; the corpses lay stripped naked, upon their backs. I counted over four hundred. Suddenly there appeared Catherine De Medici accompanied by her maids of honor and other ladies of the court. She mounted a terrace from which a full sight of the carnage could be had. They came – "

Louis Rennepont stopped short. He hid his face in his hands. "Alas! I have to inform you of something still more horrible than anything I have yet said! The furies who profaned the corpse of Coligny were beings, who, depraved by misery and ignorance, and besotted by a brutish paganism, yielded obedience to fanatic promptings. But Catherine De Medici and the women of her suite were brought up in the splendors of court life, and yet they came to mock and insult the bodies of the dead. And would you believe it – " but again Louis Rennepont found it impossible to proceed. "No!" he cried; "I shall not soil your ears with the nameless infamies of those worse than harpies.[78 - Out of respect for our female readers we dare not here quote the Register Journal of L'Etoile, page 81, where is found in extenso the conversation, marked by a savage obscenity, between the Queen and the court ladies who accompanied her. The conversation is confirmed by all contemporaneous historians.] While Catherine De Medici, her maids of honor and a bevy of court ladies were amusing themselves on the terrace, Fra Hervé, still carrying Coligny's head on the point of the pike, addressed to the Queen a few words that I did not hear, my attention being at that moment diverted by the appearance of Charles IX at the balcony of one of the windows of the Louvre. The King held a long arquebus in his hand; a page carried another of identical shape and stood behind his master ready to pass it over to him. Suddenly I saw the King lower the arm, take aim, blow upon the fuse on the cock, approach it to the pan – and the shot departed. Charles IX raised his arquebus, looked into the distance, and started to laugh – pleased as a hunter who has brought down his game. The monster with a human face was firing upon the Huguenots who were fleeing from the butchery in the St. Germain quarter, and were attempting to escape death by swimming across the Seine.

"After haranguing Catherine De Medici, Fra Hervé resumed his march to Montfaucon at the head of his band, dragging behind them the now shapeless remains of the Admiral. I had to cross Paris almost from one end to the other in the wake of Fra Hervé's procession. In the course of the march my eyes encountered fresh horrors. We ran across Marshal Tavannes, the commander of the royal army at the battle of Roche-la-Belle. At the head of a regiment of the guards he was urging his men and the mobs to massacre, shouting to them: 'Kill! Bleed them! Bleed them! A bleeding is good in August as well as in May!' And his men did the bleeding. They bled so well that the gutters ran no longer water but blood. The smoldering hatreds of neighbors against neighbors were now given a loose to, under the pretext of religious fervor. Among a thousand atrocities that I witnessed on that frightful day, I shall mention but one, because it exceeds any other that I have yet mentioned. When I first arrived in Paris, and despite the apprehensions that were uppermost on my mind, I often went to the lectures of the illustrious scientist Remus. The man's renown, he being one of the most celebrated professors at the University, besides enjoying the reputation of a foremost philanthropist of these days, attracted me. I found students, grown-up men and even greyheads crowding around his chair. Well, holding close to Fra Hervé's band, I passed by the house of Remus, which the cut-throats had invaded. A large concourse of people blocked our way, and interrupted our march for awhile. The mob clamored aloud for the life of the celebrated scientist. The most frantic in their cries for the murder were a bunch of pupils, between fourteen and fifteen years of age, whom two monks – a Carmelite and a Dominican – had in lead. The assassins finally pushed Remus, half naked, out of his house. The unhappy man, already wounded in many places, and blinded by the blood that streamed down his face, staggered like a drunken man, and held his hands before him. I see him yet – he falls to the ground, they despatch him, and thereupon the pupils, boys yet, throw themselves upon the corpse of the scientist, rip his bowels open, tear out the steaming entrails, turn the body around, raise the bloody shirt that barely covered it, and thrash the corpse with its own intestines amid roars of laughter, while they shout: 'Remus has whipped enough of us, it is now our turn to whip him.'

"Fra Hervé's band again resumed its march. It arrived at one of the city gates that leads to the gibbet of Montfaucon. As I had hoped, the gate was thrown open before the Cordelier. I slackened my pace, fell to the rear of the procession, and, at the first practicable turn on the road, I jumped aside and blotted myself out of sight in a wheat field. The tall stalks concealed me completely. I waited till Fra Hervé's band was a safe distance away. I crept to the road that encircles the ramparts and towards sunset I arrived, worn out with fatigue, at an inn where I spent the night, giving myself out for a good Catholic. Early in the morning I started for Etampes. They had just finished the carnage when I arrived! It was still going on in Orleans when I passed that city. At Blois, at Angers, at Poitiers – the same massacres of our brothers. Thus, after long years of hypocrisy and craftiness, the pact of the triumvirate inspired by Francis of Guise, the butcher of Vassy, was finally carried out. Oh, my friends! Not for nothing did Catherine De Medici say to the Jesuit Lefevre: 'Induce the Holy Father and Philip II to be patient; let us lull the reformers with a false sense of safety; I shall hatch the bloody egg that the Guise laid – on one day, at the same hour, the Huguenots will be exterminated in France.' The Italian woman kept her promise. The shell of the egg, nursed in her bosom, has broken, and the extermination has leaped out full armed."

Odelin's widow rose to her feet pale and stately. She raised one of her venerable hands to heaven, and with a gesture of malediction she uttered these words, solemnly, amidst the profound silence of her family:

"Be they eternally accursed of God and man, who, from this day or in the centuries to come, do not repudiate the Church of Rome, that infamous Church, the only Church that has ever given birth to such misdeeds!"

"By my sister's death!" cried the Franc-Taupin. "Shall the voice of Estienne of La Boetie be hearkened to at last? Shall we at last see all leagued against one? the oppressed, the artisans, the plebs, finally annihilate the oppressor and crush royalty?"

Hardly had the Franc-Taupin finished speaking when James Henry, the Mayor of La Rochelle, entered precipitately, and addressing Louis Rennepont, said: "My friend, the few words dropped by you to some of the people whom you met on your arrival, have flown from mouth to mouth and thrown the city into a state of alarm! Is it true that Monsieur Coligny has been assassinated?"

"Monsieur Coligny has been assassinated! All the Protestant leaders are murdered!" answered Louis Rennepont. "All the Protestants of Paris were massacred on St. Bartholomew's night! At Etampes, at Orleans, at Blois, at Tours, at Poitiers, the work of extermination is still in progress. It was expected to steep in blood the rest of France as well. It is a fact!"

"To arms! And may the Lord protect us!" shouted James Henry vigorously. "Let us make ready for a desperate defense. La Rochelle is now the only safe city left to the Huguenots. Charles IX will not be long in laying siege to us. I shall order the belfry to ring. The City Council shall be in session within an hour. It shall proclaim La Rochelle in a state of danger. To arms! War to the knife against the King and his Catholics, against the assassins of our brothers! To arms!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE

For the first time in their lives did Charles IX, his mother and her priests discover that there was a limit to endurance. The crime so long elaborated, so skilfully planned, and carried out with incredible audacity, so far from annihilating the Reformation gave it fresh life, steeled its nerves, and rendered it unconquerable. Hardly had two months elapsed since the massacres of St. Bartholomew, when, not Huguenots only, but a considerable portion of the Catholic party itself, in open revolt at the cruel excesses of the court, the fanaticism of the papacy and the subjection of France to the exactions of Philip II, took up arms, and made common cause with the Huguenots in order to bring about the triumph not only of the religious but of a political reformation also. The new adversaries of Charles IX and his mother took the name of the "Politicals." Alarmed at the renewed and more threatening attitude of the now so unexpectedly reinforced Huguenots, the King endeavored once more to beguile them with false promises. He doubled and twisted, sought to deal and compromise. It was too late. A fourth religious war broke out. Several provinces federated together upon a republican plan. La Rochelle became the fortified center of the Protestants. Against that city Charles IX concentrated and directed all his forces in the course of the last month of the year 1572 – less than six months after St. Bartholomew's night.