Volume IV Part 14 (1/2)

Whereupon I incontinently gave such strict orders, that, if he presents himself, the command which it pleases your Majesty to lay upon me will be acted upon. There hath not pa.s.sed, for these last few days, by way of this city, any person going Romewards save a squire of the Duke of Guise's, named Paule, the which had departed four hours previously on the same day on which I received the said letter from your Majesty.”

We do not find anywhere, in reference to this incident, any information going further than this reply of the governor of Lyons to Charles IX.

However it may be, the remains of Coligny's body, after having been hung and exposed for some days on the gibbet of Montfaucon, were removed by Duke Francis de Montmorency, the admiral's relative and friend, who had them transferred to Chantilly and interred in the chapel of the castle.

After having been subjected, in the course of three centuries, at one time to oblivion and at others to divers transferences, these sad relics of a great man, a great Christian, and a great patriot, have been resting, for the last two and twenty years, in the very castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing, his ancestors' own domain having once more become the property of a relative of his family, the Duke of Luxembourg, to whom Count Anatole de Montesquiou transferred them, and who, in 1851, had them sealed up in a bit of wall in ruins, at the foot of an old tower, under the site of the bed-chamber of the d.u.c.h.esses of Chatillon, where, in all probability, Coligny was born. The more tardy the homage, the greater.

The actual murderers of Coligny, the real projectors of the St. Bartholomew, Catherine de' Medici and her son the Duke of Anjou, at the very moment when they had just ordered the ma.s.sacre, were seized with affright at the first sound of their crime. The Duke of Anjou finishes his story with this page ”After but two hours' rest during the night, just as the day was beginning to break, the king, the queen my mother, and I went to the frontal of the Louvre, adjoining the tennis-court, into a room which looks upon the area of the stable-yard, to see the commencement of the work. We had not been there long when, as we were weighing the issues and the consequence of so great an enterprise, on which, sooth to say, we had up to that time scarcely bestowed a thought, we heard a pistol-shot fired. I could not say in what spot, or whether it knocked over anybody; but well know I that the sound wounded all three of us so deeply in spirit that it knocked over our senses and judgment, stricken with terror and apprehension at the great troubles which were then about to set in. To prevent them, we sent a gentleman at once and with all haste to M. de Guise, to tell him and command him expressly from us to retire into his quarters, and be very careful to take no steps against the admiral, this single command putting a stop to everything else, because it had been determined that in no spot in the city should any steps be taken until, as a preliminary, the admiral had been killed.

But soon afterwards the gentleman returning told us that M. de Guise had answered him that the command came too late, that the admiral was dead, and the work was begun throughout the rest of the city. So we went back to our original determination, and let ourselves follow the thread and the course of the enterprise.”

The enterprise, in fact, followed its thread and natural course without its being in the power of anybody to arrest or direct it. It had been absolutely necessary to give information of it the evening before to the provost of tradesmen of Paris, Le Charron, president in the court of taxation (Board of Excise), and to the chief men of the city. According to Brantome, ”they made great difficulties and imported conscience into the matter; but M. de Tavannes, in the king's presence, rebuked them strongly, and threatened them that, if they did not make themselves busy, the king would have them hanged. The poor devils, unable to do aught else, thereupon answered, 'Ha! is that the way you take it, sir, and you, monsieur? We swear to you that you shall hear news thereof, for we will ply our hands so well right and left that the memory shall abide forever of a right well kept St. Bartholomew.'” ”Wherein they did not fail,”

continues Brantome, ”but they did not like it at first.” According to other reports, the first opposition of the provost of tradesmen, Le Charron, was not without effect; it was not till the next day that he let the orders he had received take their course; and it was necessary to apply to his predecessor in his office, the ex-provost Marcel, a creature of the queen-mother's, to set in motion the turbulent and the fanatical amongst the populace, ”which it never does to 'blood,' for it is afterwards more savage than is desirable.” Once let loose upon the St. Bartholomew, the Parisian populace was eager indeed, but not alone in its eagerness, for the work of ma.s.sacre; the gentlemen of the court took part in it pa.s.sionately, from a spirit of vengeance, from religious hatred, from the effect of smelling blood, from covetousness at the prospect of confiscations at hand. Teligny, the admiral's son-in-law, had taken refuge on a roof; the Duke of Anjou's guards make him a mark for their arquebuses. La Rochefoucauld, with whom the king had been laughing and joking up to eleven o'clock the evening before, heard a knocking at his door, in the king's name; it is opened; enter six men in masks and poniard him. The new Queen of Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, had gone to bed by express order of her mother Catherine. ”Just as I was asleep,” says she, ”behold a man knocking with feet and hands at the door and shouting, Navarre! Navarre! My nurse, thinking it was the king my husband, runs quickly to the door and opens it. It was a gentleman named M. de Leran, who had a sword-cut on the elbow, a gash from a halberd on the arm, and was still pursued by four archers, who all came after him into my bedroom. He, wis.h.i.+ng to save himself, threw himself on to my bed; as for me, feeling this man who had hold of me, I threw myself out of bed towards the wall, and he after me, still holding me round the body. I did not know this man, and I could not tell whether he had come thither to offer me violence, or whether the archers were after him in particular, or after me. We both screamed, and each of us was as much frightened as the other. At last it pleased G.o.d that M. de Nanqay, captain of the guards, came in, who, finding me in this plight, though he felt compa.s.sion, could not help laughing; and, flying into a great rage with the archers for this indiscretion, he made them begone, and gave me the life of that poor man who had hold of me, whom I had put to bed and attended to in my closet, until he was well.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Queen of Navarre and the Huguenot----372]

We might multiply indefinitely these anecdotical scenes of the ma.s.sacre, most of them brutally ferocious, others painfully pathetic, some generous and calculated to preserve the credit of humanity amidst one of its most direful aberrations. History must show no pity for the vices and crimes of men, whether princes or people; and it is her duty as well as her right to depict them so truthfully that men's souls and imaginations may be sufficiently impressed by them to conceive disgust and horror at them; but it is not by dwelling upon them and by describing them minutely, as if she had to exhibit a gallery of monsters and madmen, that history can lead men's minds to sound judgments and salutary impressions; it is necessary to have moral sense and good sense always in view, and set high above great social troubles, just as sailors, to struggle courageously against the tempest, need to see a luminous corner where the sky is visible, and a star which reveals to them the port. We take no pleasure, and we see no use, in setting forth in detail the works of evil; we should be inclined to fear that, by familiarity with such a spectacle, men would lose the perception of good, and cease to put hope in its legitimate and ultimate superiority. Nor will we pause either to discuss the secondary questions which meet us at the period of which we are telling the story; for example, the question whether Charles IX. fired with his own hand on his Protestant subjects whom he had delivered over to the evil pa.s.sions of the aristocracy and of the populace, or whether the balcony from which he is said to have indulged in this ferocious pastime existed at that time, in the sixteenth century, at the palace of the Louvre, and overlooking the Seine. These questions are not without historic interest, and it is well for learned men to study them; but we consider them incapable of being resolved with certainty; and, even were they resolved, they would not give the key to the character of Charles IX. and to the portion which appertains to him in the deed of cruelty with which his name remains connected. The great historic fact of the St. Bartholomew is what we confine ourselves to; and we have attempted to depict it accurately as regards Charles IX.'s hesitations and equally feverish resolutions, his intermixture of open-heartedness and double-dealing in his treatment of Coliguy, towards whom he felt himself drawn without quite understanding him, and his puerile weakness in presence of his mother, whom he feared far more than he trusted. When he had plunged into the orgies of the ma.s.sacre, when, after having said, ”Kill them all!” he had seen the slaughter of his companions in his royal amus.e.m.e.nts, Teligny and La Rochefoucauld, Charles IX. abandoned himself to a fit of mad pa.s.sion. He was asked whether the two young Huguenot princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry de Conde, were to be killed also; Marshal de Retz had been in favor of it; Marshal de Tavannes had been opposed to it; and it was decided to spare them. On the very night of the St. Bartholomew, the king sent for them both. ”I mean for the future,” said he, ”to have but one religion in my kingdom; the ma.s.s or death; make your choice.” Henry of Navarre reminded the king of his promises, and asked for time to consider; Henry de Conde ”answered that he would remain firm in the true religion though he should have to give up his life for it.” ”Seditious madman, rebel, and son of a rebel,” said Charles, ”if within three days you do not change your language, I will have you strangled.” At this first juncture, the king saved from the ma.s.sacre none but his surgeon, Ambrose Pare, and his nurse, both Huguenots; on the very night after the murder of Coligny, he sent for Ambrose Pare into his chamber, and made him go into his wardrobe, says Brantome, ”ordering him not to stir, and saying that it was not reasonable that one who was able to be of service to a whole little world should be thus ma.s.sacred.” A few days afterwards, ”Now,” said the king to Pare, ”you really must be a Catholic.” ”By G.o.d's light,” answered Pars, ”I think you must surely remember, sir, to have promised me, in order that I might never disobey you, never, on the other hand, to bid me do four things--find my way back into my mother's womb, catch myself fighting in a battle, leave your service, or go to ma.s.s.” After a moment's silence Charles rejoined, ”Ambrose, I don't know what has come over me for the last two or three days, but I feel my mind and my body greatly excited, in fact, just as if I had a fever; meseems every moment, just as much waking as sleeping, that those ma.s.sacred corpses keep appearing to me with their faces all hideous and covered with blood. I wish the helpless and the innocent had not been included.” ”And in consequence of the reply made to him,” adds Sully in his (_Economies royales_ t. i. p. 244, in the Pet.i.tot collection), ”he next day issued his orders, prohibiting, on pain of death, any slaying or plundering; the which were, nevertheless, very ill observed, the animosities and fury of the populace being too much inflamed to defer to them.”

The historians, Catholic or Protestant, contemporary or researchful, differ widely as to the number of the victims in this cruel ma.s.sacre; according to De Thou, there were about two thousand persons killed in Paris the first day; D'Aubigne says three thousand; Brantome speaks of four thousand bodies that Charles IX. might have seen floating down the Seine; La Popeliniere reduces them to one thousand. There is to be found, in the account-books of the city of Paris, a payment to the grave-diggers of the cemetery of the Innocents for having interred eleven hundred dead bodies stranded at the turns of the Seine near Chaillot, Auteuil, and St. Cloud; it is probable that many corpses were carried still farther, and the corpses were not all thrown into the river. The uncertainty is still greater when one comes to speak of the number of victims throughout the whole of France; De Thou estimates it at thirty thousand, Sully at seventy thousand, Perefixe, Archbishop of Paris in the seventeenth century, raises it to one hundred thousand; Papirius Ma.s.son and Davila reduce it to ten thousand, without clearly distinguis.h.i.+ng between the ma.s.sacre of Paris and those of the provinces; other historians fix upon forty thousand. Great uncertainty also prevails as to the execution of the orders issued from Paris to the governors at the provinces; the names of the Viscount d'Orte, governor of Bayonne, and of John le Hennuyer, Bishop of Lisieux, have become famous from their having refused to take part in the ma.s.sacre; but the authenticity of the letter from the Viscount d'Orte to Charles IX. is disputed, though the fact of his resistance appears certain; and as for the bishop, John le Hennuyer, M. de Formeville seems to us to have demonstrated in his _Histoire de l'ancien Eveche-comte de Lisieux_ (t. ii. pp. 299-314), ”that there was no occasion to save the Protestants of Lisieux, in 1572, because they did not find themselves in any danger of being ma.s.sacred, and that the merit of it cannot be attributed to anybody, to the bishop, Le Hennuyer, any more than to Captain Fumichon, governor of the town. It was only the general course of events and the discretion of the munic.i.p.al officers of Lisieux that did it all.” One thing which is quite true, and which it is good to call to mind in the midst of so great a general criminality, is that, at many spots in France, it met with a refusal to be a.s.sociated in it; President Jeannin at Dijon, the Count de Tende in Provence, Philibert de la Guiche at Macon, Tanneguy le Veneur de Carrouge at Rouen, the Count de Gordes in Dauphiny, and many other chiefs, military or civil, openly repudiated the example set by the murderers of Paris; and the munic.i.p.al body of Nantes, a very Catholic town, took upon this subject, as has been proved from authentic doc.u.ments by M. Vaurigaud, pastor of the Reformed Church at Nantes [in his _Essai sur l'Histoire des Eglises reformees de Bretagne,_ t. i. pp. 190-194], a resolution which does honor to its patriotic firmness as well as to its Christian loyalty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chancellor Michael de l'Hospital----376]

A great, good man, a great functionary, and a great scholar, in disgrace for six years past, the Chancellor Michael de l'Hospital, received about this time, in his retreat at Vignay, a visit from a great philosopher, Michael de Montaigne, ”anxious,” said the visitor, ”to come and testify to you the honor and reverence with which I regard your competence and the special qualities which are in you; for, as to the extraneous and the fortuitous, it is not to my taste to put them down in the account.”

Montaigne chose a happy moment for disregarding all but the personal, and special qualities of the chancellor; shortly after his departure, L'Hospital was warned that some sinister-looking hors.e.m.e.n were coming, and that he would do well to take care of himself. ”No matter, no matter,” he answered; ”it will be as G.o.d pleases when my hour has come.”

Next day he was told that those men were approaching his house, and he was asked whether he would not have the gates shut against them, and have them fired upon, in case they attempted to force an entrance. ”No,” said he, ”if the small gate will not do for them to enter by, let the big one be opened.” A few hours afterwards, L'Hospital was informed that the king and the queen-mother were sending other hors.e.m.e.n to protect him.

”I didn't know,” said the old man, ”that I had deserved either death or pardon.” A rumor of his death flew abroad amongst his enemies, who rejoiced at it. ”We are told,” wrote Cardinal Granvelle to his agent at Brussels (October 8, 1572), ”that the king has had Chancellor de l'Hospital and his wife despatched, which would be a great blessing.”

The agent, more enlightened than his chief, denied the fact, adding, ”They are a fine bit of rubbish left, L'Hospital and his wife.” Charles IX. wrote to his old adviser to rea.s.sure him, ”loving you as I do.” Some time after, however, he demanded of him his resignation of the t.i.tle of chancellor, wis.h.i.+ng to confer it upon La Birague, to reward him for his co-operation in the St. Bartholomew. L'Hospital gave in his resignation on the 1st of February, 1573, and died six weeks afterwards, on the 18th of March. ”I am just at the end of my long journey, and shall have no more business but with G.o.d,” he wrote to the king and the queen-mother.

”I implore Him to give you His grace, and to lead you with His hand in all your affairs, and in the government of this great and beautiful kingdom which He hath committed to your keeping, with all gentleness and clemency towards your good subjects, in imitation of Himself, who is good and, patient in bearing our burdens, and prompt to forgive you and pardon you everything.”

From the 24th to the 31st of August, 1572, the bearing and conduct of Charles IX. and the queen-mother produced nothing but a confused ma.s.s of orders and counter-orders, affirmations and denials, words and actions incoherent and contradictory, all caused by a habit of lying and the desire of escaping from the peril or embarra.s.sment of the moment. On the very first day of the ma.s.sacre, about midday, the provost of tradesmen and the sheriffs, who had not taken part in the ”Paris matins,” came complaining to the king ”of the pillage, sack, and murder which were being committed by many belonging to the suite of his Majesty, as well as to those of the princes, princesses, and lords of the court, by n.o.blemen, archers, and soldiers of the guard, as well as by all sorts of gentry and people mixed with them and under their wing.” Charles ordered them ”to get on horseback, take with them all the forces in the city, and keep their eyes open day and night to put a stop to the said murder, pillage, and sedition arising,” he said, ”because of the rivalry between the houses of Guise and Chatillon, and because they of Guise had been threatened by the admiral's friends, who suspected them of being at the bottom of the hurt inflicted upon him.” He, the same day, addressed to the governors of the provinces a letter in which he invested the disturbance with the same character, and gave the same explanation of it.

The Guises complained violently at being thus disavowed by the king, who had the face to throw upon them alone the odium of the ma.s.sacre which he had ordered. Next day, August 25, the king wrote to all his agents, at home and abroad, another letter, affirming that ”what had happened at Paris had been done solely to prevent the execution of an accursed conspiracy which the admiral and his allies had concocted against him, his mother, and his brothers;” and, on the 26th of August, he went with his two brothers to hold in state a bed of justice, and make to the Parliament the same declaration against Coligny and his party. ”He could not,” he said, ”have parried so fearful a blow but by another very violent one; and he wished all the world to know that what had happened at Paris had been done not only with his consent, but by his express command.” Whereupon it was enjoined upon the court, says De Thou, ”to cause investigations to be made as to the conspiracy of Coligny, and to decree what it should consider proper, conformably with the laws and with justice.” The next day but one, August 28, appeared a royal manifesto running, ”The king willeth and intendeth that all n.o.blemen and others whosoever of the religion styled Reformed be empowered to live and abide in all security and liberty, with their wives, children, and families, in their houses, as they have heretofore done and were empowered to do by benefit of the edicts of pacification. And nevertheless, for to obviate the troubles, scandals, suspicion, and distrust, which might arise by reason of the services and a.s.semblies that might take place both in the houses of the said n.o.blemen and elsewhere, as is permitted by the aforesaid edicts of pacification, his Majesty doth lay very express inhibitions and prohibitions upon all the said n.o.blemen and others of the said religion against holding a.s.semblies, on any account whatsoever, until that, by the said lord the king, after having provided for the tranquillity of his kingdom, it be otherwise ordained. And that, on pain of confiscation of body and goods in case of disobedience.”

These tardy and lying accusations officially brought against Coligny and his friends; these promises of liberty and security for the Protestants, renewed in the terms of the edicts of pacification, and, in point of fact, annulled at the very moment at which they were being renewed; the ma.s.sacre continuing here and there in France, at one time with the secret connivance and at another notwithstanding the publicly-given word of the king and the queen-mother; all this policy, at one and the same time violent and timorous, incoherent and stubborn, produced amongst the Protestants two contrary effects: some grew frightened, others angry.

At court, under the direct influence of the king and his surroundings, ”submission to the powers that be” prevailed; many fled; others, without abjuring their religion, abjured their party. The two Reformer-princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry de Conde, attended ma.s.s on the 29th of September, and, on the 3d of October, wrote to the pope, deploring their errors and giving hopes of their conversion. Far away from Paris, in the mountains of the Pyrenees and of Languedoc, in the towns where the Reformers were numerous and confident, at Sancerre, at Montauban, at Nimes, at La Roch.e.l.le, the spirit of resistance carried the day. An a.s.sembly, meeting at Milhau, drew up a provisional ordinance for the government of the Reformed church, ”until it please G.o.d, who has the hearts of kings in His keeping, to change that of King Charles IX. and restore the state of France to good order, or to raise up such neighboring prince as is manifestly marked out, by his virtue and by distinguis.h.i.+ng signs, for to be the liberator of this poor afflicted people.” In November, 1572, the fourth religious war broke out. The siege of La Roch.e.l.le was its only important event. Charles IX. and his councillors exerted themselves in vain to avoid it. There was everything to disquiet them in this enterprise: so sudden a revival of the religious war after the grand blow they had just struck, the pa.s.sionate energy manifested by the Protestants in asylum at La Roch.e.l.le, and the help they had been led to hope for from Queen Elizabeth, whom England would never have forgiven for indifference in this cause. Marshal de Biron, who was known to favor the Reformers, was appointed governor of La Roch.e.l.le; but he could not succeed in gaining admittance within the walls, even alone and for the purpose of parleying with the inhabitants. The king heard that one of the bravest Protestant chiefs, La Noue _Ironarm,_ had retired to Mons with Prince Louis of Na.s.sau. The Duke of Longueville, his old enemy, induced him to go to Paris. The king received him with great favor, gave up to him the property of Teligny, whose sister La Noue had married, and pressed him to go to La Roch.e.l.le and prevail upon the inhabitants to keep the peace. La Noue refused, saying that he was not at all fitted for this commission. The king promised that he would ask nothing of him which could wound his honor. La Noue at last consented, and repaired, about the end of November, 1572, to a village close by La Roch.e.l.le, whither it was arranged that deputies from the town would come and confer with him. And they came, in fact, but at their first meeting, ”We are come,” they said, ”to confer with M. de La Noue, but we do not see him here.” La Noue got angry. ”I am astonished,” he said, ”that you have so soon forgotten one who has received so many wounds and lost an arm fighting for you.” ”Yes, there is a M. de La Noue, who was one of us, and who bravely defended our cause; but he never flattered us with vain hopes, he never invited us to conferences to betray us.” La Noue got more fiercely angry. ”All I ask of you is, to report to the senate what I have to say to them.” They complied, and came back with permission for him to enter the town. The people looked at him, as he pa.s.sed, with a mixture of distrust and interest. After hearing him, the senate rejected the pacific overtures made to them by La Noue. ”We have no mind to treat specially and for ourselves alone; our cause is that of G.o.d and of all the churches of France; we will accept nothing but what shall seem proper to all our brethren. For yourself, we give you your choice between three propositions: remain in our town as a simple burgess, and we will give you quarters; if you like better to be our commandant, all the n.o.bility and the people will gladly have you for their head, and will fight with confidence under your orders; if neither of these propositions suits you, you shall be welcome to go aboard one of our vessels and cross over to England, where you will find many of your friends.” La Noue did not hesitate; he became, under the authority of the mayor Jacques Henri, the military head of La Roch.e.l.le, whither Charles IX. had sent him to make peace. The king authorized him to accept this singular position. La Noue conducted himself so honorably in it, and everybody was so convinced of his good faith as well as bravery, that for three months he commanded inside La Roch.e.l.le, and superintended the preparations for defence, all the while trying to make the chances of peace prevail. At the end of February, 1573, he recognized the impossibility of his double commission, and he went away from La Roch.e.l.le, leaving the place in better condition than that in which he had found it, without either king or Roch.e.l.lese considering that they had any right to complain of him.

Biron first and then the Duke of Anjou in person took the command of the siege. They brought up, it is said, forty thousand men and sixty pieces of artillery. The Roch.e.l.lese, for defensive strength, had but twenty-two companies of refugees or inhabitants, making in all thirty-one hundred men. The siege lasted from the 26th of February to the 13th of June, 1573; six a.s.saults were made on the place; in the last, the ladders had been set at night against the wall of what was called Gospel bastion; the Duke of Guise, at the head of the a.s.sailants, had escaladed the breach, but there he discovered a new ditch and a new rampart erected inside; and, confronted by these unforeseen obstacles, the men recoiled and fell back. La Roch.e.l.le was saved. Charles IX. was more and more desirous of peace; his brother, the Duke of Anjou, had just been elected King of Poland; Charles IX. was anxious for him to leave France and go to take possession of his new kingdom. Thanks to these complications, the peace of La Roch.e.l.le was signed on the 6th of July, 1573. Liberty of creed and wors.h.i.+p was recognized in the three towns of La Roch.e.l.le, Montauban, and Nimes. They were not obliged to receive any royal garrison, on condition of giving hostages to be kept by the king for two years. Liberty of wors.h.i.+p throughout the extent of their jurisdiction continued to be recognized in the case of lords high-justiciary. Everywhere else the Reformers had promises of not being persecuted for their creed, under the obligation of never holding an a.s.sembly of more than ten persons at a time. These were the most favorable conditions they had yet obtained.

Certainly this was not what Charles IX. had calculated upon when he consented to the ma.s.sacre of the Protestants. ”Provided,” he had said, ”that not a single one is left to reproach me.” The ma.s.sacre had been accomplished almost without any resistance but that offered by certain governors of provinces or towns, who had refused to take part in it. The chief leader of French Protestantism, Coligny, had been the first victim.

Far more than that, the Parliament of Paris had accepted the royal lie which accused Coligny of conspiring for the downfall of the king and the royal house; a decree, on that very ground, sentenced to condemnation the memory, the family, and the property of Coligny, with all sorts of rigorous, we should rather say atrocious, circ.u.mstances. And after having succeeded so well against the Protestants, Charles IX. saw them recovering again, renewing the struggle with him, and wresting from him such concessions as he had never yet made to them. More than ever might he exclaim, ”Then I shall never have rest!” The news that came to him from abroad was not more calculated to satisfy him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The St. Bartholomew----383]

The St. Bartholomew had struck Europe with surprise and horror; not only amongst the princes and in the countries that were Protestant, in England, Scotland, and Northern Europe, but in Catholic Germany itself, there was a very strong feeling of reprobation; the Emperor Maximilian II. and the Elector Palatine Frederic III., called the Pious, showed it openly; when the Duke of Anjou, elected King of Poland, went through Germany to go and take possession of his kingdom, he was received at Heidelberg with premeditated coolness. When he arrived at the gate of the castle, not a soul went to meet him; alone he ascended the steps, and found in the hall a picture representing the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew; the elector called his attention to the portraits of the princ.i.p.al victims, amongst others that of Coligny, and at table he was waited upon solely by French Protestant refugees. At Rome itself, in the midst of official satisfaction and public demonstrations of it exhibited by the pontifical court, the truth came out, and Pope Gregory XIII. was touched by it when certain of my lords the cardinals who were beside him ”asked wherefore he wept and was sad at so goodly a despatch of those wretched folk, enemies of G.o.d and of his Holiness: 'I weep,' said the pope, 'at the means the king used, exceeding unlawful and forbidden of G.o.d, for to inflict such punishment; I fear that one will fall upon him, and that he will not have a very long bout of it (will not live very long). I fear, too, that amongst so many dead folk there died as many innocent as guilty.'” [_Brantome,_ t. iv. p. 306. He attributes this language to Pope Pius V., who died four months before the St. Bartholomew. Gregory XIII., elected May 15, 1572, was pope when the ma.s.sacre took place.] Only the King of Spain, Philip II., a fanatical despot, and pitiless persecutor, showed complete satisfaction at the event; and he offered Charles IX. the a.s.sistance of his army, if he had need of it, against what there was remaining of heretics in his kingdom.

Charles IX. had not mind or character sufficiently sound or sufficiently strong to support, without great perturbation, the effect of so many violent, repeated, and often contradictory impressions. Catherine de Medici had brought up her three sons solely with a view of having their confidence and implicit obedience. ”All the actions of the queen-mother,” said the Venetian amba.s.sador Sigismund Cavalli, who had for a long while resided at her court, ”have always been prompted and regulated by one single pa.s.sion, the pa.s.sion of ruling.” Her son Charles had yielded to it without an effort in his youth. ”He was accustomed to say that, until he was five and twenty, he meant to play the fool; that is to say, to think of nothing but of enjoying his heyday; accordingly he showed aversion for speaking and treating of business, putting himself altogether in his mother's hands. Now, he no longer thinks and acts in the same way. I have been told that, since the late events, he requires to have the same thing said more than three times over by the queen, before obeying her.” It was not with regard to his mother only that Charles had changed. ”His looks,” says Cavalli, ”have become melancholy and sombre; in his conversations and audiences he does not look the speaker in the face; he droops his head, closes his eyes, opens them all at once, and, as if he found the movement painful, closes them again with no less suddenness. It is feared that the demon of vengeance has possessed him; he used to be merely severe; it is feared that he is becoming cruel. He is temperate in his diet; drinks nothing but water.

To tire himself at any price, is his object. He remains on horseback for twelve or fourteen consecutive hours; and so he goes hunting and coursing through the woods the same animal, the stag, for two or three days, never stopping but to eat, and never resting but for an instant during the night.” He was pa.s.sionately fond of all bodily exercises, the practice of arms, and the game of tennis. ”He had a forge set up for himself,”

says Brantome, ”and I have seen him forging cannon, and horseshoes, and other things as stoutly as the most robust farriers and forgemen.” He, at the same time, showed a keen and intelligent interest in intellectual works and pleasures. He often had a meeting, in the evening, of poets, men of letters, and artists--Ronsard, Amadis Jamin, Jodelle, Daurat, Baif; in 1570 he gave them letters patent for the establishment of an Academy of poetry and music, the first literary society founded in France by a king; but it disappeared amidst the civil wars. Charles IX.

himself sang in the choir, and he composed a few hunting-airs. Ronsard was a favorite, almost a friend, with him; he used to take him with him on his trips, and give him quarters in his palace, and there was many an interchange of verse between them, in which Ronsard did not always have the advantage. Charles gave a literary outlet to his pa.s.sion for hunting; he wrote a little treatise ent.i.tled La Cha.s.se royale, which was not published until 1625, and of which M. Henry Chevreul brought out, in 1857, a charming and very correct edition. Charles IX. dedicated it to his lieutenant of the hunt, Mesnil, in terms of such modest and affectionate simplicity that they deserve to be kept in remembrance.

”Mesnil,” said the king, ”I should feel myself far too ungrateful, and expect to be chidden for presumption, if, in this little treatise that I am minded to make upon stag hunting, I did not, before any one begins to read it, avow and confess that I learnt from you what little I know.

. . . I beg you, also, Mesnil, to be pleased to correct and erase what there is wrong in the said treatise, the which, if peradventure it is so done that there is nothing more required than to re-word and alter, the credit will be firstly yours for having so well taught me, and then mine for having so well remembered. Well, then, having been taught by so good a master, I will be bold enough to essay it, begging you to accept it as heartily as I present it and dedicate it to you.”