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in one letter as wholly given up to pleasure; and expresses in another his hopes of "the king's revolt from papistry."* Catherine, at the same time, had scenes of violent jealousy and pathetic reconciliation, real or pretended, with her son. She at moments entered into the views of Coligny against Spain, the better to deceive him, or from her real unsteadiness, and accounted for her new disposition, by having recently discovered that Philip II. had poisoned her dear daughter Elizabeth.

The

The treaty of marriage was signed at Blois on the 11th of April. But a new question arose. Charles proposed that it should be solemnised in the capital. queen of Navarre and her friends objected to Paris, where the catholics were all-powerful, the huguenots hated, and the populace devoted to the Guises. Charles insisted and prevailed; and the queen of Navarre, on the 15th of May, set out for Paris, where she died in a few days, of fatigue, vexation, and regret.§

The admiral meantime visited his family at the castle of Châtillon. Counsels and remonstrances against trusting himself in Paris reached him from various quarters. He rejected all advice, and even angrily rebuked his friends. || 66 Rather," said he, " than renew the horrors of civil war, I would be dragged a corpse through the streets of Paris T;" and the alternative which he thus

se divertissait à mille folastres passetemps, se levait de grand matin pour fouetter les gentilhommes et les demoiselles dans leurs licts."- Mezeray, Charles IX.

* Digges.

+ Mém. de Tav. Père Daniel, Hist. de France.

Mém. de Pierre l'Estoile. In a letter from Catherine to the French ambassador at Venice (MSS. Bib. du Roi), she instructs him to say, that the king her son will avenge the death of her daughter Elizabeth on the king of Spain.

There was a groundless story of her being poisoned with perfumed gloves by the queen mother's Italian perfumer. Margaret of Valois relates, in her Memoirs, an anecdote which illustrates humorously the extent to which court dissimulation was carried. Margaret made a visit of ceremony to the remains of the queen of Navarre, attended by the duchess of Nevers, between whom and the deceased there was a mutual and mortal hatred. "La duchesse," says Margaret," part de nostre trouppe, et apres plusieurs belles humbles et grandes reverences s'approche de son lit, et luy prenant la main la luy baise; puis avec une grande reverence pleine de respect, se met auprès de nous. Ibid.

Thuan. lib. lii.

supposed was one of the least shocking indignities which awaited him. Similar warnings were conveyed in vain to Henry, called, since the death of his mother, king of Navarre.*

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The opportune succession of Gregory XIII. to the inflexible Pius promised facilities for obtaining a dispensation. Charles instructed his ambassador Ferralz to express to the new pontiff the assurance of his good intentions in the marriage; his confidence that between Henry's docility and deference to him, and "his being on his part not asleep to the means of giving peace to his kingdom," he should make him a catholic; and, in fine, his resolution, if the dispensation were refused, to have the marriage solemnised without it. Gregory sent a conditional dispensation, the terms of which could not be complied with, and the cardinal de Bourbon refused to perform the ceremony. Charles became impatient of delay; spoke of the cardinal's superstitious scruples with contempt; commanded Mandelot §, governor of Lyons, to stop, as of his own authority, every courier to and from Italy for the next four days after the receipt of his orders; and overcame the objections of the cardinal by means of a forged letter, announcing, in the name of the French ambassador at Rome, that a regular dispensation was on its way, and the marriage meantime might be solemnised.||

The ceremony took place on the 18th of August, in a temporary building adjoining the cathedral of Nôtre Dame, for the rigid huguenots would not enter the church. A strangely mingled turmoil of nuptial revelry and murderous deliberation immediately followed. The same personages figured one moment at a banquet, a masque, or a tournament, and were sitting the next hour

*Henry IV. related, that whilst he was engaged at play with the dukes of Alençon and Guise, a few days before St. Bartholomew's eve, the dice appeared dotted with blood, and filled the players with consterration. This optical phenomenon, produced by the accident of a certain angle between the black dots on the dice and the sun's rays, was recorded or rejected by historians as a prodigy, until Voltaire suggested the natural and obvious solution.

+ Char. to Fer. MSS. Bib. du Roi. See Appendix D.

Thuan. lib. lii.

MSS. Bib. du Roi.

Thuan. lib. lii

in secret conclave upon the shedding of blood. The medley of bigotry and gaiety, gallantry and barbarity, sensuality and carnage, which characterised the French court at this period, presents, says a philosophic historian, the most fantastic picture ever exhibited of the contradictions of the human species.*

Two days after the marriage, Coligny complained to Charles of some outrage offered to the huguenots of a provincial town. "Father," said Charles impatiently, 66 give me but four days to divert myself, and, on the word of a king, you and those of your religion shall no longer complaint;" and this atrocious equivocation passed for good faith upon Coligny. The duke of Guise was attended by a numerous armed and devoted train of friends and dependants. Charles proposed to Coligny, that, to overawe the Guises, the regiment of guards should be brought into the capital. The admiral gratefully assented to a measure, of which his own safety appeared the object. +

On the 22d of August, as Coligny walked slowly from the Louvre towards his house, looking over a paper which had been put into his hand, Maurevel, a noted assassin, called "the king's slayer §," lying in wait for him in a house belonging to a dependant of the duke of Guise, discharged an arquebuse loaded with two bullets, one of which wounded Coligny in the right hand, the other in the left arm. The wounded admiral having pointed with undisturbed tranquillity to the place whence the arquebuse was fired, sent to inform the king, and walked to his house, leaning on two attendants. Charles was playing at tennis with the duke of Guise when the message reached him. He dashed his racket against the ground, exclaiming with an oath, "Shall I never have peace?" whilst Guise walked quietly out of the tennis court.|| Meanwhile the assassin, mounted

Essai sur les Mœurs, &c.

Thuan. Hist. lib. lii.

Mém. de l'Estat. Thuan. Hist. lib. lii.

+ Mém. de Pierre l'Estoile.
§ Brantôme.

on a fleet horse from the royal stable, escaped through the port St. Antoine.

Coligny's wounds were so dangerous as to threaten death. He expressed a wish to see the king, for the purpose of giving him a faithful subject's dying counsel. Charles came with his mother and a train of courtiers, heard the advice of Coligny, comforted him with such expressions of sympathy, as "Father, the wound is yours, but the pain is mine ;" and commanded, within thirty hours, the execution of a massacre which should begin with the trusting and already dying man, to whom he had thus expressed condolence, and promised justice at his bedside.

The populace manifested symptoms of violence. Coligny, upon being informed, sent to Charles for half a dozen royal archers to protect his house from insult; of danger he had no thought. Charles and the duke of Anjou, who was present when the message was communicated, forced upon Cornaton, the messenger, a guard of fifty men, commanded by Cosseins, a devoted partisan of the Guises and enemy of Coligny.* All catholics were ordered to evacuate, and the protestants to occupy, the quarter in which he resided, under the same pretence of regard for his safety.† The Vidame de Chartres alone suspected treachery, proposed to remove Coligny out of Paris by force or stratagem, was over-ruled, and exclaimed, "Perish who will by the rascally rabble of Paris, I reserve myself for better fortune," took up or resumed his quarters in the suburb beyond the Seine, and escaped the massacre.

The great body of the huguenots shut their eyes and ears §, and submitted like men under a spell. Meanwhile

Mém. de l'Estat.

Thuan. lib. lii. Mém. de l'Estat.

Two other officers had obtained the admiral's leave to retire, even before he was wounded. Upon his asking their motive, one answered, "You are too much caressed here;" the other said, in reply to the admiral's reasonings, "I would rather be saved with fools, than perish with the wise."

§ "Hæc et alia indicia et passim sparsi susurri, nisi mens læva fuisset, ad admonendos protestantes satis essent, tamen constanti dissimulatione regis effectum est ut Colinius et Telinius, nihil inclementius aut tale quicquam de ejus animo sibi persuadere possent."- Thuan. Hist. lib. lii.

the secret conclave round Charles and Catherine was choosing between counsels distinguished from each other only by gradations of the horrible. One is stated to have been, that the Montmorencies should be massacred with the admiral and his friends; another, proposed secretly to the queen, was that the Guises, after having exterminated those two factions, should in their turn be exterminated by the court. The sublimate perfidy of the latter counsel was thought hazardous or impracticable; the Montmorencies were saved by the fortunate or prudent absence of the marshal, who would survive to avenge them; and the duke of Guise, who never supposed that his own fate was in the balance, was charged with the execution.

Guise had long been the favoured lover of Margaret of Valois, and regarded Coligny as his father's. assassin. Having made his dispositions, he awaited the signal with the impatient vengeance of one who had been robbed by the huguenots of a father and a mistress. But as the fearful moment drew near, resolution or his nerves began to fail Charles. His frame trembled, and cold drops stood upon his brow.* The relentless Catherine, supported by Anjou, Nevers, Birague, Retz, and Tavanes, worked upon his pride, his vengeance, and his fears; and he told them with an oath not to leave a huguenot to reproach him. Catherine ordered the tocsin to sound on the instant. It was two in the morning. A vague tumultuous preparatory stir attracted the notice of some protestant gentlemen residing in the palace, or in the quarter of the Louvre. They went out to enquire the cause, and were speared to death. Guise, Aumale, and the bastard of Angoulême went to the house of the admiral.

The

treacherous Cosseins demanded and obtained admission in the king's name; and a young German, named Bêmes, having slain Coligny, threw his head from the window into the court below, to satisfy Guise that the deed was done.

The general slaughter immediately followed. "Cou

* Thuan. lib. lii. Mezeray, Hist. de France, Charles IX.

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