[Transcriber's Notes: This production was derived from https://archive.org/stream/catholicworld08pauluoft/ catholicworld08pauluoft_djvu.txt. Page images are also available at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/cath.html Use a fixed pitch font to view the tables. Lengthy footnotes are highlighted with a light background.]

The Catholic World.

A Monthly Magazine
of
General Literature And Science.

Vol. VIII.
October, 1868, TO March, 1869.

New York:
The Catholic Publication House,
126 Nassau Street.
1869.

John A. Gray & Green,
Printers,
16 And 18 Jacob Street, New York.

Contents.

American College in Rome, The, [560].
Apostolic Letter from the Pope, [721].
A Legend for Husbands, [824].
Basilica of St. Saturnin, The, [101].
Bretons, The Faith and Poetry of the, [123].
Brittany, Its People and its Poems, [598].
Church of the Future, The, [143].
Catholicity and Pantheism, [181], [360], [565], [657], [811].
Curé d'Ars, Statue of, [200].
Catholic Congress? Shall we have a, [224].
Canadian Customs, [246].
Charities of New York, The, [279].
Catholicity, Creative Genius of, [406].
Christmas Gifts, [546].
Dante Alighieri, [213].
Education, Catholic View of, [686].
Earl Derby's Homer, [740].
Flaminia, [76].
Galileo-Galilei, [321], [433].
Good old Time and our own, The, [380].
Genius of Catholicity, The Creative, [406].
General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, [461].
General Council, The Approaching, [796].
Hospitality, Legend of, [68].
Holy Grayle, The, [137].
Hyacinthe, Rev. Père, Discourse of, [188].
Hypnotics, [289].
Heremore-Brandon, [522], [663], [784].
Human Will, Teaching of Statistics concerning, [643].
Homer's Iliad, by Earl Derby, [740].
Husbands, A Legend for, [824].
Ireland's Martyrs, [838].
Kaulbach and the Era of the Reformation, [56].
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, [1].
Maria von Mörl, [32].
Marcel, The Story of, [254], [347], [494].
Middle Ages, Ignorance of the, [598].
Out of the Depths have I cried, [453].
O'Reilly's Irish Martyrs, [838].
Philosophy and Science, The Present Disputes in, [229].
Purgatory, Treatise on, [266].
Protestant Episcopal Church, General Convention of, [461].
Protestantism a Failure, [503].
Pope Pius IX., Letter Apostolic of, [536].
"Poor Mara!" [637].
Porter's Human Intellect, [671], [767].
Progress of Nations, Seaman's, [724].
Religion Medically Considered, [116].
Rings, [129].
Right Path found through the Great Snow, The, [370].
Ritualism, The Future of, [828].
St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, [1].
Sisters of the Poor, The Little, [100].
School-Room, In the, [132].
Schaff's Church History, [417].
Scientific and Revealed Truth, The Unity of, [485].
Sun, Eclipse of, in 1868, [697].
Seaman's Progress of Nations, [724].
St. Michael the Hermit, The Legend of, [853].
The Invasion, [18], [162], [301], [473], [619], [746].
Talleyrand, [88].
The Little Sisters of the Poor, [110].
The Faith and Poetry of the Bretons, [123].
Tuscany, Glimpses of, [196], [316].
The Great Snow, The Right Path found through, [370].
The Poor? Who shall take care of, [703], [734].
The Iliad of Homer, [740].
Who shall take care of our Sick? [42].
Who shall take care of the Poor? [703], [734].
Ximenes, Cardinal, [577].

Poetry.

Aspirations, [222].
A Door, Inscription on, [636].
Count de Montalembert, [128].
Christmas, [471].
Dante, Sonnet from Vita Nuova of, [545].
Discipline, [641].
De Profundis, [853].
Friendships, [187].
Indian Summer, [405].
Lines, [745].
Mine Enemy, [73].
Penitence, [421].
Primrose, The Evening, [521].
Pius IX., The Volunteers for, [635].
Summer Shower, A, [40].
The Silent Clock, [733].

New Publications.

Alton Park, [143].
A Psyche of To-day, [143].
A Becket, Life of, [428].
Asmodeus in New York, [429].
A Book about Dominies, [719].
A Few Friends, [856].
Barrington's Sketches of his own Times, [287].
Beginning German, [574].
Beginner's French, [576].
Biarnois's Theoretical French, [718].
Bottala, Rev. Paul, on the Pope, [283].
Cardinals, Lives of the English, [139].
Cradle Lands, [422].
Criminal Abortion, [573]Charlie Bell, [860].
Dalgairns on the Holy Communion, [430].
Excelsior, or Essays on Politeness, [288].
Emmet, Life and Times of, [430].
Father Cleveland, [141].
Fay's Outlines of Geography, [429].
Gropings after Truth, [429].
Gayarré's Philip II. of Spain, [570].
Greeley's Recollections, [571].
Gayarré's History of Louisana, [716].
Gray's Botany, [860].
Herbert's Cradle Lands, [422].
Hebrew Grammar, New, [426].
Historical Gazetteer of Vermont, [428].
Hopkins's Law of Love, [858].
Hayden's Light on Last Things, [838].
Illustrated Family Almanac, [572].
Kelly's Dissertations on Irish Church History, [856].
Logic for Young Ladies, [143].
Leaf and Flower Pictures, [286].
Life of Blessed Spinola, [859].
Mühlbach's Goethe and Schiller, [141].
Modern Women, [143].
Mrs. Sadlier's MacCarthy More, [288].
Mignon, [288].
Moore's Poetical Works, [431].
Moore's Memoir of Sheridan, [431].
Mark's Lessons in Geometry, [431].
New Adam, The, [427].
Newman's Verses, [574].
New Illustrated History of Ireland, [720].
O'Leary, Rev. Arthur, Works of, [287].
O'Shea's Juvenile Library, [573].
Outlines of Composition, [859].
Plain Talk about Protestantism, [288].
Plain Chant, A Grammar of, [857].
Roman Martyrology, The, [430].
Rural Poems, [573].
Report of New York University, [575].
Robertson's Lectures on Burke, [717].
Symbolism, by Moehler, [285].
Sunday-School Library, Illustrated, [286].
Shiel's Sketches of the Irish Bar, [287].
Sydnie Adriance, [430].
South America, A Thousand Miles across, [431].
Synodus Dioecesana Baltimorensis, [432].
St. John's Knowledge and Love of God, [573].
Sadlier's Almanac, [718].
The Works of Burns, Scott, Milton, etc., [142].
The Lily of the Valley, [287].
The Bird, [425].
Tablets, [426].
The Two Women, [432].
Taine's Ideal of Art, [572].
The Little Gipsy, [574].
Tobacco and Alcohol, [719].
The Conscript, [859].
Willson's Histories, [141].
Webster's Dictionaries, [144].
Winninger, Rev. F. X., on the Pope, [285].

The Catholic World.

Vol. VIII., No. 43 October, 1868.

The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew—
its Origin And Character.

[Footnote 1]

[Footnote 1: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: preceded by a History of the Religious Wars in the Reign of Charles IX. By Henry White. London: John Murray. 1868. 8vo, pp. xviii.-505.
La St. Barthélemy, ses Origines, son Vrai Caractère, ses Suites. Par George Gandy. Revue des Questions Historiques. Tome ier, pp. 11-91, 32-391.]

Few historical events have been more persistently used in arguments against the Catholic Church than the massacre of Admiral Coligny, and a great number of Protestant nobles and people, at Paris, on St. Bartholomew's day, 1572, by orders emanating from the court.

Isolated from the religious wars in which it is but one of the darkest episodes, this affair has been set forward as an independent act—a deliberate scheme of the Catholic party in France—king, nobles, and clergy—to extinguish Protestantism at a single blow. The numbers of the victims have been exaggerated to an extent incompatible with all contemporary statistics of population; and the massacre of St. Bartholomew has thus been transmitted, as if by a series of distorting mirrors, from the pamphlets of the time to the histories, sermons, periodicals, and school-books of our days, each reflection but a distortion of the last, and so exceeding it in unreality that at length truth had become utterly hopeless.

In fact, we might as well expect to have Bibles throw out the long-sanctioned misprint of "strain at a gnat," and print, correctly, "strain out a gnat," or omit the intrusive words at the end of the Lord's Prayer, which all Protestant Biblical scholars admit to be spurious, as to expect popular accounts of St. Bartholomew's day to come down to what is really certain and authentic.

Even among writers of a higher stamp, there seemed to be a disposition to avoid research that would break the charm. Historical scholars made little effort to free the subject from the mists and fables with which it has been encompassed, and set down only well-attested facts with authorities to sustain them. It is, therefore, with no less surprise than gratification that we find in the recent work of Henry White a laborious and thorough examination of the evidence still extant as to the originators of the dark deed, their motives and object, the extent of the slaughter, and the reasons assigned at the moment and subsequently. It is one of those subjects in which no work will be accepted entirely by readers of an opposite faith, inasmuch as it is almost impossible to avoid drawing inferences, and ascribing motives for acts, to real or supposed modes of thought in the religious body to which the actors belonged.

"Respecting the massacre of St. Bartholomew there are also two theories. Some contend that it was the result of a long-premeditated plot; and this view was so ably maintained by John Allen, in the Edinburgh Review, (vol. xliv.—1826,) that nothing further was left to be said on the subject. Others are of opinion that it was the accidental result of a momentary spasm of mingled terror and fanaticism, caused by the unsuccessful attempt to murder Coligny. This theory has been supported by Ranke, in a review of Capefigue's Histoire de la Réforme; by Soldan; by Baum, in his Life of Beza; and by Coquerel, in the Revue Théologique, in 1859."

Such is White's statement of the position of the question; and his work has been justly styled "able and unpretentious."

In France, the anti-Christian writers of the last century—Voltaire and his school—were all loud in denunciation of the affair, and painted it in its worst colors. It was too good a weapon, in their war against religion, to be easily laid down; and it was made to do such good service that later Catholic apologists have till recently scarcely ventured on any examination of the question that would seem at all favorable. The discussion by Gandy is, in extent and research, as well as in soundness of principle, by far the best review of the subject. Yet, as a close historical argument, the force is sometimes destroyed by the citation of comparatively weak and undecisive authorities.

In English, the best Catholic tract on St. Bartholomew was that of Dr. Lingard.

Some of his positions were not well taken, and do not stand when confronted with authorities brought forward by later research. Yet his essay compelled a real historic investigation by subsequent writers, and has led, indirectly at least, to the work of Mr. White.

This writer says, not inaptly (p. 200): "It is easy to prove any historical untruth by a skilful manipulation of documents." This skilful manipulation need not be done with the consciousness of guilt. It may be the result of prejudice, party spirit, bias; and he himself is not free from objection. With an evident endeavor to be impartial, his education and prejudices lead him to slur over some acts and expatiate on others; to ascribe to exalted piety all the deeds of one party, and deny to the other any real religious feeling.

This taints all his introductory chapters on the religious wars in France, prior to 1572, giving a false light and color to the whole. It gives the impression that real piety, devotion, religious feeling, were not to be found at all among the Catholics of France, but were the peculiar attributes of the disciples gained by the emissaries sent from Geneva by Calvin.

Biassing the reader thus, he keeps back the real exterminating, destructive, and intolerant spirit of the Huguenots, and, while detailing here and there excesses, treats as insignificant the conspiracy of Amboise, Coligny's complicity in Poltrot's assassination of the Duke of Guise, Queen Jane's ruthless extirpation of Catholicity, the Michelade, and the fearful butchery enacted by Montgomery at Orthez, a small place where, nevertheless, the Catholic victims numbered, according to his own figures, three thousand, halt what he claims as the number of Protestant victims at Paris on the bloody day of St. Bartholomew.

Nor is he more happy in depicting the theories and ideas of the two parties.

Compare the Protestants in France with the early Christians and the difference will be seen. The Reformers everywhere were aggressive and intolerant. They did not ask merely liberty to adopt new religious views and practise them. They did, indeed, raise the cry of religious freedom—freedom of worship—freedom of conscience; but what did these words really mean? They meant the suppression of the Catholic worship, the extermination of the priesthood and religious orders, the pillage and defacing of Catholic churches, and the destruction of paintings, statues, relics, and crosses. When this was done, they proclaimed religious liberty. Thus, at Lyons, in 1562, "the Mass was abolished, liberty of conscience proclaimed," in two consecutive clauses.

The utter absurdity of such a connection does not strike Mr. White, nor will it strike many English readers as it does a Catholic ear. The Protestant spirit has so falsified ideas that we constantly hear the same inconsistency. The enthusiastic son of New England claims that the Puritan fathers established "freedom to worship God according to the dictates of conscience," when, in fact, they claimed only the right to worship for themselves and denied it to all others; the son of Rhode Island claims Roger Williams as the real founder of toleration, and yet his fanatical opposition to the slightest semblance to Catholicity was such that he exhorted the trained bands not to march under the English flag because it had the cross on it; the historian of New York, or the more elaborate historian of the Netherlands, will claim for Holland the honor of establishing religious freedom, and we read their pages with the impression that the people of the Netherlands were Protestant, as a unit; and that the republic established after throwing off the Spanish yoke made the land one where all creeds met in harmony, and all men were equal in the eye of the law in their religious rights. Yet what is the real fact? From that time till the present nearly one half of the people of the Netherlands have been Catholics. The Protestants, possessing a slight numerical advantage, ruled, and to the Catholics their rule was one of iron. They were deprived of all churches, prohibited from erecting others, confined to certain quarters, subjected to penal laws. Where then was the freedom of worship? In the reformers' minds these words had no application to Catholics.

Now, it was this aggressive, intolerant spirit of the reformers that made the civil governments in countries which elected to remain Catholic so severe on the new religionists. The moment a foreign emissary from Geneva gathered a few proselytes, enough to form a body of any size, then began coarse songs, ridiculing and scoffing at the holiest doctrines of the Catholics; then crosses would be broken down, crucifixes, statues of the blessed Virgin and the saints, defaced or destroyed; as their numbers grew, priests would be driven from their churches or shot down, and the edifices themselves plundered and appropriated to the new creed. That such things could be borne tamely was impossible. In France the government was weak and vacillating. The humbler and less instructed portions of the Catholic body retaliated in the same measure that they saw meted out, and resisted a creed that used abuse and violence, by abuse and violence. They had not the cant of their antagonists, but true religion is not to be measured by that standard.

Alarmed by the excesses of the Reformers elsewhere, the French government attempted to repress their entrance into France by penal laws, a course that seldom attains the end proposed. The progress of error was to be checked by more assiduous teaching of the people by their pastors, by zeal in reforming morals, by institutions practically exercising the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

Yet, while conceding the general deficiency of power in penal laws to check the progress of religious opinions, it must be remembered that the destructive tenets we have alluded to made the increase of the Calvinists a danger to the peace and well-being of France. Beza, in his Profession of Faith, (v. Point p. 119,) advised the extermination of priests. Calvin (Apud Becan, t. v. opusc. 17, aph. 15, De modo propagandi Calvinismi) declares that the Jesuits must be killed or crushed by falsehood and calumny. The destruction of all representations of Christ and his saints was the constant theme of the reformed preachers, and under this war against idols, as they termed them, they included insult and outrage to the remains of those illustrious men of the past whose exalted virtues had endeared them to the Christian people.

From that day to this Protestantism has sanctioned the outrages thus advised and thus committed. The right of Protestants to demolish, on any slight pretext, Catholic churches, convents, shrines, monuments, or pictures, seems even now a sort of self-evident axiom, its exercise being regulated merely by grounds of expediency. England and the United States can show their examples of this, even in the present century; in the last, the outrages committed by New England troops in Canada and Acadia whenever a Catholic church fell into their power; the careful aiming of cannon at the monastic buildings in the siege of Quebec; the expedition against Louisburg, with the chaplain bearing an axe to demolish the idols; at once suggest themselves to the mind.

That Catholics possessed any right to their own churches, their own ideas of worship, was never entertained for a moment.

The civil law might justly repress such men, if not on the simple ground of teaching false doctrines, at least for their claim of right to destroy the liberty of those who professed the religion of their ancestors.

For some years the reform gained slowly in France, the emissaries of Calvin never relaxing their efforts, and finally winning to their side Queen Jane of Navarre, the Prince of Condé and the three famous brothers of the house of Chatillon, D'Andelot, Admiral Coligny, find the profligate Cardinal Odet. By this time the Protestant churches, true to their aggressive character, assumed a military organization, as White (p. 23) and Fauriel, a recent French Protestant author, admit, and aimed at the overthrow alike of Catholicity and royalty. This secret preparation for an armed attempt to secure the mastery of France had, by 1560, attained its full development.[Footnote 2] The moment had come for a grand effort which was to exterminate Catholicity from France as utterly as it has been from Sweden, where not even gratitude for their foremost struggle for independence saved the Catholic Dalecarlians from annihilation.

[Footnote 2: Consult Mémoires de Saulx Tavannes, p. 29; Lavallée, Histoire des Français, i. p. 575; Fauriel, Essai sur les Evénements qui ont précédé et antené le St. Barthélemy, p. 19-]

The position of affairs in France justified the hopes of the reformers. There were three parties in the state—the earnest Catholic party, headed by the Guises of Lorraine; the Huguenot party, directed by Calvin, with Condé in France as its future king, and Coligny as its master-spirit; and, as usual in such cases, a third party of weak men, who hampered the Catholics, and thus strengthened their opponents, by hesitation, uncertainty, and fitfulness.

The queen mother, Catharine de Medicis, disliked the house of Lorraine more than she loved Catholicity; and, jealous of the growing power of the Guises, was not disinclined to see the party of Condé counterbalance it. Hence, she generally threw her influence into the third party, in which figured the Duke d'Alençon, the Montmorencies, Cossé, Biron, and to which men like the famous Chancellor l'Hopital gave their influence. How little the true Catholic spirit, as we understand it now, prevailed among the higher nobility, may be inferred from the fact that the two great Protestant leaders, Condé and Coligny, were brothers of cardinals, their close relationship to princes of the Roman Church exerting no influence. One of these cardinals apostatized, and, after defying the pope, fled to England, to be poisoned by his valet; the other was a mere figure in the stirring scenes and times in which he lived.

Francis II., husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, on ascending the throne, placed the control of affairs in the hands of his uncles, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise. This meant a firm government, not one to tolerate an imperium in imperio—a power able to put in the field, as Coligny boasted, one hundred and fifty thousand men.

Encouraged by the edict of January, 1560, the masses of the reformed party were, everywhere that their numbers permitted it, seizing Catholic churches and monasteries, expelling the inmates, demolishing every vestige of the ancient faith. While they were thus committing themselves, and overawing the Catholics, the leaders formed the celebrated plot of Amboise to assassinate the Guises, seize the person of the king, and, of course, the control of the government. In spite of his disavowal, made after it had failed, Calvin really approved of it at first. This White denies, (p. 82;) but the letter to Sturm, cited by Gandy, (p. 28,) is decisive; and in the very letter where he seems to condemn his followers, he says: "Had they not been opposed, in time our people would have seized many churches; … but there, too, they yielded with the same weakness." (Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, i. p. 250.) Coligny's complicity is as evident. The ostensible leader was Bary de la Renaudie, "whose enmity to Guise," says White, "probably made him renounce his religion and join the reformers."

Protestant writers all admit that the plot of Amboise would, if successful, have overthrown Catholicity for ever in France. The Guises saw the danger to themselves, to Catholicity, and to royalty, and acted with promptness and energy. Every road and avenue leading to the place was guarded, and the separate bands of the conspirators as they came up were met and crushed, la Renaudie, the ostensible leader, being slain.

Then followed a series of terrible criminal proceedings. The partisans of the rebellion were tried, condemned, and executed with as little mercy as English rulers ever manifested to Irish rebels. White puts the number executed at one thousand two hundred, but cites no authorities to justify so large an estimate.

After this affair at Amboise, "the political character of the Huguenots," as White admits, "became more prominent, and proved the temporary destruction of French Protestantism." The reformers committed many outrages on the Catholics after the failure at Amboise, especially in the districts where Montbrun and Mouvans swept through with the hand of destruction, till the latter perished miserably at Draguignan. Then followed a new Huguenot plot, formed by Condé and his brother Anthony, but Francis II. raised a considerable force, and, marching down, overawed them. Condé and the other Huguenot leaders were summoned to appear before him. D'Andelot fled; Condé appeared, was tried, and condemned; but before any other steps were taken Francis II. died in November. "Did you ever hear or read of anything so opportune as the death of the little king?" wrote Calvin; and Beza gloried over "the foul death of the miserable boy."

Charles IX. became king, with his mother, Catharine de Medicis, as regent, and she sought to weaken the power of the Guises. Condé was released from prison, his brother Anthony made lieutenant-general of the kingdom. An assembly of the Three Estates was convened, but dissolved without effecting any good. Throughout the land, the Huguenots employed abuse and violence, drawing on themselves fearful punishment.

Still, under Catharine's fickle favor, the Huguenots were steadily gaining ground, and the Colloquy at Poissy, in 1562, where Beza appeared in person, was, in its actual result and in moral effect, a victory to the reformers. The countenance of the court gave them boldness. The Catholic party saw the evident danger and were loud in their complaints, but this only made collisions more frequent: one party elate with hope and triumph, the other seeing naught but treachery and violence.

It needed but a spark to kindle a conflagration; at last it came. On Corpus Christi, in 1561, as the procession of the blessed sacrament moved through the streets of Lyons, a Huguenot rushed upon the officiating clergyman and endeavored to wrest the consecrated host from his hands. So daring an outrage roused the Catholics to fury. In an instant the whole city was in arms, and the innocent atoned in blood for the madness of one. Even in Paris itself similar riots took place, and fifty Catholics were killed or wounded at the church of St. Medard, into which D'Andelot rode on horseback at the head of the Huguenots.

The edict of January, 1562, came at last to effect a peace. By its provisions the Protestants were to restore the churches they had seized, to cease their abuse of the Catholic ceremonies in print or discourse, and, in return, were allowed to hold meetings unarmed outside the city, but their ministers were not to go from town to town preaching. The measure of toleration thus granted may not seem excessive, but it was far greater than any Protestant power then, or long subsequently, granted to such subjects as preferred not to change their creed.

The measure, however, failed to produce tranquillity. The Huguenots, far from restoring what they had seized, continued their acts of violence. At Nismes the churches and convents were attacked and profaned, while in Gascony and Languedoc the reformers had established such a reign of terror that for forty leagues around no Catholic priest durst show himself. Montpellier, Montauban, and Castres beheld similar profanations of churches.

Coligny, a prototype of Cromwell in apparent fanaticism, in military skill, in relentless cruelty toward the Catholic clergy, like the Puritan leader of the next century, looked beyond the Atlantic. He had projected a Protestant colony of refuge in Brazil; its failure did not prevent his renewing the attempt in Florida. In the month following that in which the edict was issued, he despatched John Ribaut to lay the foundation of a French colony in America. He seems to have been planning a retreat against sudden disaster in the war they were rapidly preparing. The fate of that colony is well known. At Vassy, in March, a Huguenot congregation came into collision with the Duke of Guise; accounts differ widely as to the details. The duke asserted that his men were attacked. On being struck in the face with a stone, he cried to his men to show no quarter, and, according to White, fifty or sixty were killed and two hundred wounded.

In a moment the affair was taken up and echoed through France. It was worth an army to the cause of rebellion. The military churches rose. So complete was their organization that almost simultaneously thirty-five cities were taken, the Cevennes, the Vivarrais, and the Comté Venaissin were in revolt. Everywhere the Catholic worship was suppressed, the churches stripped, the clergy banished, while the riches torn from the shrines and altars enabled them to maintain the war.

The shrine of St. Martin of Tours, venerated and enriched by the piety of France during a thousand years, gave Condé, prince of the blood, a million two thousand livres to devastate France. To add to their strength, the Huguenots then formed the treaty of Hampton Court with Elizabeth, and by it agreed to restore Calais to England.

As we have seen, they took Lyons, and, after massacring priests and religious, abolished the Mass, and with the same breath declared that every one should be free in his religion. As the Catholics were unprepared, city after city fell into their hands, till no less than two hundred were swept by these devastating hordes, fiercer than Goth or Vandal. The history of every French city marks at this epoch the destruction of all that the past had revered. Orleans, Mans, Troyes, Tours, Bayeux, all repeat the same story. Everywhere priests, religious of both sexes, Catholic laity, were butchered and mutilated with every barbarity. The Baron des Adrets stands forth as the terrible butcher of this period, who made his barbarity a sport, and trained the mind of France to savage inhumanity. In the little town of Montbrison, in August, 1562, he slaughtered more than eight hundred men, women, and children.

The recent French historian, Martin, whose work is in process of publication in this country, glosses over this period by merely alluding to the profanation and pillage of the Catholic churches and religious houses. Every local history in France, however, attests the slaughter and mutilation of the clergy, the last infamy always popularly ascribed to the order of Coligny. Beza, writing in January, 1562, admits that the Protestants of Aquitaine, though enjoying full religious liberty, massacred priests and wished to exterminate their enemies.

This sudden rebellion was the work of Coligny, who, with his army of religious enthusiasts, and "all the restless, factious, and discontented, who linked their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve confiscation of the wealth of the church," with German mercenaries and English plunderers, swept through the land with prayer on his lips and treason in his heart.

He cloaked his treason under the hypocritical pretext that he was in arms not against the king, but against the king's advisers. White allows himself to be deluded by this hypocritical sham, and in several places censures the treasonable conduct of the Cardinal of Lorraine and others, who wrote to the King of Spain soliciting his aid to save Catholicity in France, while Coligny, in arms against his king, making treaties with Elizabeth of England, introducing into France English and German mercenaries, is never branded as a traitor at all. And if Condé and Coligny merely sought to banish the Guises, how was that to be effected by pillaging Catholic churches? They took up arms to exterminate the leaders of the Catholic party and the clergy, suppress the Catholic worship, and place Condé on the throne. White, too, censures the pope for interfering, but neglects to put before his reader the fact that part of France, the Comté Venaissin, then belonged to the Holy See, and that in that part the Huguenots were committing the same ravages. Meanwhile the royal armies rallied; and, as a first step, endeavored to induce the Huguenot leaders to lay down their arms. Condé was so far influenced by the offers made, that he agreed to leave France if Guise would do the same, but Beza traversed the projects of peace. He besought the prince, says White, "not to give over the good work he had begun, which God, whose honor it concerned, would bring to perfection."

Negotiation failing, the royal troops began the campaign to recover the conquered cities. Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Angers, Bourges, and Rouen were at once retaken, and Orleans, the stronghold of reform, besieged. In the battle of Dreux, fought on the 19th of December, the rebels were utterly defeated, Condé remaining a prisoner in the hands of the royal forces.

While besieging Orleans, (February 18th,) Guise was assassinated by Jean Méré de Poltrot, a man whom Coligny aided with money, and who had revealed to that nobleman his project of murder. White's endeavor to exculpate Coligny is very lame. He deems it suspicious that Poltrot was executed at once without his being confronted with Coligny; as though the rebel general would have come into court for the purpose, in the very heat of the civil war. He finally, however, admits: "This leaves no doubt that Coligny assented, if he did not consent, to the crime. He was not unwilling to profit by it, though he would do nothing to further it. This may diminish the lofty moral pedestal on which some writers have placed the Protestant hero; but he was a man, and had all a man's failings, though he may have controlled them by his religious principles. Nor was assassination considered at all cowardly or disgraceful in those days; not more so than killing a man in a duel was, until very recently, among us."

As he knew the project and gave money, it is hard to see how "he would do nothing to further it." That he had all a man's failings is a very loose form of speech; so loose and broad that, if assassination was not then deemed cowardly or disgraceful, the subsequent killing of Coligny himself, "a man with all a man's failings," can scarcely be deemed cowardly or disgraceful. In fact, at the time, the Protestant party openly defended the murder of Guise, and Beza, not exempt himself from suspicion of complicity, "conferred on Poltrot the martyr's crown."

The Catholic party, thus deprived of its best military leader, (for Montmorency was a prisoner, and St. Andre was butchered in cold blood after the battle of Dreux,) again inclined to peace. A negotiation, opened through Condé, resulted in the pacification of Amboise, March 19th, 1563. This gave each man liberty to profess the religion of his choice in his own domicile, but restricted public worship of the Protestants more than the edict of January had done.

The conference at Bayonne between the French and Spanish courts has often been represented as a plot for the utter extermination of the Huguenots. White shows that it was but a series of festivities; and though the troubles were spoken of, neither court counselled violent measures. Even Alva went no further than suggesting the seizure of the most turbulent leaders.

Charles himself, favorable at Bayonne, became embittered against the reformers, as White himself states, by what he saw as he returned through the states of the Queen of Navarre, who had, with relentless fury, extirpated Catholicity from her territory.

The pacification could not restore peace to the excited public mind while the two antagonistic parties stood face to face. The favor shown to Condé after he joined in expelling his English allies from Havre, as well as to Coligny, whom Montmorency summoned to garrison Paris, emboldened the reformers. The remaining Catholic churches began to undergo the terrible profanation that visited so many, and with this came retaliation. The Protestant princes in Germany at this time appealed to Charles to show lenity to their fellow-believers in his kingdom. The French monarch rebuked their intermeddling, and added, "I might also pray them to permit the Catholics to worship freely in their own cities." And White admits that the Catholics there fared no better than the Huguenots in France.

Meanwhile the Huguenot party was preparing for a new effort to obtain complete control. A force raised to watch the Spanish movements in the Low Countries was made the pretext. A plot was formed to seize the king and his mother, and Coligny, to blind the court, remained superintending his vineyards. But on the 28th of September, 1567, all France was in flames. Fifty towns were seized, and a strong force of Huguenot cavalry dashed upon Meaux to seize the king. Charles, nearly entrapped by the specious L'Hopital, reached Paris, protected by a body of gentlemen under the Duke de Nemours, but Condé pressed so close that Charles more than once turned on his pursuers, and fought at the head of his little body-guard.

As before, the Catholics were without union or plan, while the Huguenots were an organized body of secret conspirators, acting on a well-concerted plan.

Protestant allegiance to a Catholic monarch has never been very strong; indeed, it seems simply a creature of circumstance, not a matter of obligation. The attempt to set aside a Catholic sovereign after the death of Edward VI. and of Charles II. has never been treated as a crime. In the same spirit, White sees nothing wrong in Condé except failure: "His failure (to seize the king's person) made him a traitor as well as a rebel." And yet, with that strange perversity of ideas that seems inherent in his school, he at once brands the Cardinal of Lorraine as a traitor for inviting in the King of Spain, as Condé had Elizabeth.

The battle of St. Denis, under the walls of Paris, cost the royal party the life of Montmorency, while it gave them a doubtful victory. The usual horrors again desolated France. Nismes, in 1567, witnessed its famous Michelade, or massacre of the Catholics. It was a deliberate act. White says none has attempted to justify it. He puts the number of victims at seventy or eighty, but cites no authority. Mesnard, in his Histoire de Nismes; and Vaissette, in his Histoire Générale de Languedoc, make it from one hundred and fifty to three hundred.

The military operations continued until Catharine visited the Huguenot camp, and effected the treaty of Longjumeau, (March 20th, 1568.) But this peace was as hollow as the rest. White charges that the Catholics put numbers of Protestants to death. The Huguenots certainly continued their destruction of Catholic churches. "Brequemant, one of their leaders," says White, "cheered them on to murder, wearing a string of priests' ears around his neck."

At last the Catholics saw the necessity of organizing, and in June, 1568, a Christian and Royal League was formed at Champagne, "to maintain the Catholic Church in France, and preserve the crown in the house of Valois, so long as it shall govern according to the Catholic and Apostolic religion."

This White qualifies as "a formidable league that shook the throne, and brought France to the brink of destruction:" while he has no such terms to apply to the military organization of the Huguenot churches, which was endeavoring to seize the government, and raise Condé to the throne under the name of Louis XIII.

The Catholics did not act too soon. The Huguenots were again ripe for action. The leaders retired to Rochelle, and France was again in arms. Elizabeth sent to Rochelle men, arms, and money; the Prince of Orange also promised aid.

The first great battle was fought at Jarnac, March 13th, 1569, where Condé was defeated and killed. Andelot died soon after, in May, and Duke Wolfgang, of Deux Ponts, who brought fourteen thousand Germans to swell the Huguenot ranks, soon followed. Coligny gained some advantage in the action at Roche Abeille, showing terrible cruelty to the prisoners; but in the battle of Moncontour his army of eighteen thousand was scattered to the winds, scarcely a thousand being left around him. Then cries for quarter were met by shouts of "Remember Roche Abeille!"

Retreating, Coligny was joined by Montgomery, fresh from that terrible massacre of Orthez, before which St. Bartholomew itself pales, three thousand Catholics having been butchered, without regard to age or sex, and the river Gave being actually dammed up by the bodies of the Catholics. The indecisive action of Arnay le Due led to negotiations resulting in the treaty of St. Germain, August, 1570.

These treaties are differently viewed. The proposal for them always came from the court, and followed every victory gained by the Catholic party. White would make them out to be traps laid by Catharine; Gandy seems to lean to the same solution in attributing them to her, though he makes her object to have been to prevent the Guises from being complete masters.

But may we not suppose the Catholic party sincere in their wish for peace? They were never first to take up arms; they were unorganized; the court was wavering, and always contained a number of secret allies of the Huguenot cause. That the Huguenot leaders, after a defeat, should through these raise a peace party at court would be a matter of course. The peace gave them all they needed—time to prepare for a new campaign.

Charles IX. was sincere in his wish to make the treaty of St. Germain a reality. In the interval of tranquillity he married, and turned his thoughts to foreign affairs, proposing to aid the Netherlands against the King of Spain. But the Huguenot leaders kept together in the strong city of Rochelle, ready for prompt action. At last, however, Coligny, in September, 1571, repaired to court, where he was received by Charles with great cordiality. Two marriage schemes were now set on foot to strengthen the Protestant cause—the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret, sister of Charles IX., and the marriage of his brother, D'Alençon, to Queen Elizabeth. Even Jane, Queen of Navarre, came to Blois to negotiate in regard to the marriage of her son.

Coligny so far gained Charles that a French force took Mons, and an army under Genlis, marching to that place, was defeated by the Spaniards, under Don Federigo de Toledo. The marriage of Henry took place on the 18th of August, and seemed to confirm Coligny's paramount influence at court.

This influence, thus suddenly acquired, is in itself a great mystery. Why Charles should thus take to his confidence a man who had so recently and so repeatedly organized armed treason, who had ravaged and desolated half his kingdom, who had laid in ruins nearly half the churches and religious establishments of France, has never been satisfactorily explained.

That Charles was a mere hypocrite, and that his conduct was part of a concerted plot, does not seem at all warranted by any evidence that deserves consideration. That he could really have conceived so sudden an attachment, confidence, and respect for the admiral can be explained only as one of the sudden freaks of a man whose mind was eccentric to the very verge of insanity. But Coligny really ruled in the councils of France; the Guises were, in a manner, banished from court. Catharine and Anjou saw their influence daily decrease. Coligny insisted on war with Spain, and plainly told Charles that he must fight Spain or his own subjects—use the Huguenots to aid Holland against Philip II., or behold civil war again ravaging France.

Catharine strongly opposed this warlike spirit, and sought means to regain her lost power.

The arrogant attitude of Coligny was fast uniting all whom jealousy or personal interest had divided. As often happens, it needed but a spark to kindle a vast conflagration.

One of the great historical questions has been as to the premeditation of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Huguenot pamphleteers of the day, followed by the overrated De Thou, Voltaire and his school, and the less temperate Catholic writers, maintain that the plot was long before concerted. White, by his chain of authorities, shows that it was at first aimed at Coligny only, and that the general massacre was not premeditated.

Anjou expressly states that, finding the influence of the admiral dangerous to himself and his mother, they determined to get rid of him, and to concert means with the Duchess of Nemours, "whom alone we ventured to admit into the plot, because of the mortal hatred she bore to the admiral," in her mind the real murderer of her husband, the Duke of Guise.

This statement of Anjou is supported by the testimony of Michieli (Baschet, Diplomatie Venetienne, p. 541) and of the nuncio Salviati.

This makes the first move one of the court party against Coligny personally. The Catholic party, then a recently formed organization, had no part in it; and yet, if we may credit the statement of Cretineau Joly, who has never deceived as to a document he professes to possess, Catholicity in France was in imminent peril, Coligny having, in a letter of June 15th, 1572, to the Prince of Orange, given notice of an intended general execution of the Catholics in September. If a general massacre was plotted, the Catholic party were to be victims, not actors.

Coligny's death having been decided on, Henry de Guise was admitted to the plot, and the execution assigned to him. It needed little to stimulate him to shoot down one who had been privy to his father's assassination. An officer, either Maurevert or Tosinghi, was stationed in a vacant house belonging to Canon Villemur, and as Coligny rode past fired at him, cutting off the first finger of the right hand, and burying a ball in his left arm.

Charles was, as all admit, not only not privy to this act, but was deeply incensed at it. He ordered the assassin to be pursued, and, in despatches to other parts of the kingdom, gave assurance of his intention to adhere to the edict of pacification and to punish all who infringed it. Accompanied by his mother and his brother Henry, he went, that same afternoon, to see the admiral. There a long private conversation ensued between the king and Coligny. White gives this at length from a life of Coligny, published in 1576, but which cannot surely be held as authority. It rests probably on no better source than the Mémoires de l'Etat de France.

Charles, in his letter to the French ambassador at London, tells him that this "vile act proceeds from the enmity between Coligny's house and the house of Guise. I will take steps to prevent their involving my subjects in their quarrels."

Whether the interview changed the king's mind as to the source of the attempt, of course is only conjectural. Still acting in good faith, he appointed a commission of inquiry, including members of both religions, the Huguenots apparently suggested by Coligny.

Charles returned to his palace moody and incensed. He ordered guards to protect Coligny against any further violence, and by his demeanor alarmed his mother and Henry. The Duke d'Aumale and Henri de Guise, foreseeing a tempest, withdrew to the Hotel de Guise, and shut themselves up.

The position of affairs was strange enough. The admiral was not wounded so as to excite any alarm as to his recovery; the loss of a finger and a bullet-wound in the arm, injuries not requiring, one would suppose, the nine physicians and eleven surgeons called in. But it was an attempt on the life of the leader of their party, and the Huguenots determined to pursue it at all hazards. The more violent of them marched through the streets in military array, threatening not only the Guises, who were considered the prime movers, but Anjou, the queen-mother, and even the king himself. They passed the Hotel de Guise with every mark of defiance, and proceeding to the Louvre, made their way to the king's presence as he sat at supper, fiercely demanding vengeance: "If the king refuses us justice," they cried, "we will take the matter into our own hands."

This violence could not but have had its effect on the king. At all events, it must have made him ready to credit any charge of violence brought against them. Catharine was clearly overjoyed at the false step of the Huguenots, as offering her a means of escape from her critical position.

On Saturday, after dinner, a cabinet council was held, and here, according to Tavannes, Anjou, and Queen Margaret of Navarre, it was for the first time proposed to Charles to put an end to all the troubles by cutting off Coligny and the leaders of the party. The council was composed, it is said, of Catharine, Anjou, Nevers, Tavannes, Retz, and the chancellor Birague. Of Catharine and Anjou, afterward Henry III., we need say nothing. Tavannes was little but a soldier, ready for action. The rest, strangely enough, were Italians. Louis de Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers by marriage, was timid and easily led; Albert de Gondi, Marshal de Retz, foster-brother of the king, was a schemer; René de Birague is represented by Mezeray as one who bent before every breath of wind from the court.

Not only in this council was there no one of the Huguenot party so recently restored to favor, but no one of the moderate party, none even of the old French nobility. All but Tavannes were bound to Catharine, and would naturally support her.

According to Anjou and Tavannes, Catharine urged the necessity of the blow to prevent a new civil war, for which the Huguenots were preparing, having sent for ten thousand Germans and six thousand Swiss, their object being to place Henry of Navarre on the throne. Margaret states that they made the king believe his life in danger. The nuncio Salviati, in his despatch of September 2d, also ascribes the king's ultimate action to the instigation of Catharine, impelled by her fears.

Charles hesitated long, and at last yielded, crying: "Kill all, then, that none may live to reproach me." The words of 'the weak king, wrought to madness by his perplexities, seem to have been accepted at once; and the scheme of murder took a wider scope. The Huguenots were doomed.

The question arises, Had Catharine any ground for charging the Huguenots with a plot against the king? A despatch of the Duke of Alva had been received, announcing it. White derides the idea as preposterous. Gandy examines the subject, and admits that the charge lacks all requisite proof. He ascribes the whole to fear. But this does not seem to explain it sufficiently.

The fact of a plot formed after Coligny's wound must have been established in some degree at least, to have brought the king to the policy of the queen-mother. The bed of justice on the 26th, the solemn declaration of Charles, the action of the Parliament, may have been rash and unsupported by proper testimony, but were to all appearance sincere. Charles was not a hypocrite. The declarations of Bouchavannes as to what was proposed at Coligny's house were doubtless more than justified by the loud threats of some of the leaders, like De Pilles and Pardaillan, whose words and deeds make La Noue call them stupid, clumsy fools.

The solution of this historical question is made the more difficult from the speedy termination of the house of Valois. That family and the League come down to us under a heavy cloud of odium; the succession of Henry IV. to the throne made them the only parties on whom all might safely lay the burden of an act at once a crime and a blunder, while it was equally necessary to shield the party with which Henry then acted from any charge of conspiracy. Interest raised up apologists for him and his associates: there was none to do reverence to the name of Catharine or the fallen house of Valois.

Once that the council had decided on its bloody course, the action was prompt. Guise, from being a prisoner in his house, was summoned to command. To the leaders of the people of Paris he repeated the charge of a Huguenot conspiracy against the king, of Swiss and German invaders, adding the approach of a force under Montmorency to burn the city. At four in the afternoon Anjou rode through the streets. At ten, another council was held, to which Le Charron, provost of the merchants, was summoned. To him the king repeated the same charges, giving him orders to put the able-bodied men in each ward under arms, and take precaution for the safety of the city.

Meanwhile, Huguenot gentlemen entered the palace as usual, and Catholics mingled with the Huguenots who called upon Coligny.

White makes an observation that must strike all: "It is strange that the arrangements in the city, which must have been attended with no little commotion, did not rouse the suspicion of the Huguenots."

At midnight another council was held in the palace. Charles was violent and wavered, but Catharine held him to his decision, and Guise went forth to complete the work.

Between three and four in the morning, Guise, Aumale, Angoulême, Nevers, with some German and Italian soldiery, proceeded to Coligny's house. Admission was gained in the king's name, and Carl Dianowitz, or Behm, ran the admiral through, others finishing him as he fell to the floor. The body was then thrown from the window, where Guise and Angoulême treated it contemptuously. Petrucci cut off the head. The mob mutilated the body, as priests had been, by the admiral's orders, and it was finally hung on the public gallows at Montfauçon. All the occupants of the house were slain but two, Merlin and Cornaton. In the adjoining dwellings were Teligny, Rochefoucault, and others, who were all slain.

Then came the signal from Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, and the massacre became general. The Huguenot gentlemen in the Louvre were slain before the eyes of the king to the number of two hundred, says White in his text, although his footnote, citing Queen Margaret's account, says her estimate of thirty or forty is more probable.

In the city, the houses in which Huguenots lodged had been registered, and were thus easily found. The soldiers burst in, killing all they found; but the citizens seem to have gone too far. At five in the afternoon, they were ordered to lay down their arms, although the work of blood was continued for two days by the soldiery.

The details of the massacre would extend this article much too far.

Among the questions that have arisen, is the alleged firing of Charles on the drowning Huguenots thrown into the Seine. It is asserted in the party pamphlets, the Réveille-Matin, 1574, Le Tocsin, 1579, but rests chiefly on what Froude calls "the worthless authority of Brantome."

A more important point is the number of victims. The estimates differ widely:

White bases his estimate on a curious calculation. An entry in the registers of the Hôtel de Ville states that on the 9th of September certain persons received 15 livres for burying dead bodies, and on the 23d the same men received 20 livres for burying 1100. He concludes that the 15 livres represented 1500, by what rule he does not explain, "giving," he says, "a known massacre of 2600." Even on his basis, 35 livres would really represent only 1925. But according to Caveirac, who first cites this entry, 35 livres were paid for interring 1100, which would give only about 1600 in all.

Gandy concludes his view of the matter by giving 1000 or 1200 as the nearest approach to the truth; but the estimate of Tavannes, an actor, Kirkaldy, a witness, and the Tocsin, a Huguenot pamphlet, would seem to be most authentic.

Thus fell the great admiral, the Cromwell of France, in religion less fanatical than hypocritical, a soldier of a high order, aiming under Calvin's teaching to make France a commonwealth with a religious tyranny that would brook no opposition. A man who occupied long a prominent position as one of the high nobility and rulers of the land, but who was simply a destroyer, not a creator; for no great work, no line of sound policy, no important reform, is connected with his name. His life was most injurious to the country, and but for the cowardly and cruel circumstances attending his death, he would occupy but a subordinate place in French history. Few other victims were eminent: Peter Ramus, the learned professor, Pierre de la Place, President of the Court of Ans, and some say Goujon, the sculptor. In fact, the more able leaders of the party had not come to Paris, and this renders the deed indefensible even on the ground of policy. The few nobles who hastened to bask in the sunshine of the court, were not the men most to be dreaded. The slaughter of men and women belonging to the lower classes could but rouse the sympathies of Europe.

The work of blood was not confined to Paris. Throughout France, as the news spread of a Huguenot conspiracy against the king, the scene was reenacted. Of this, White remarks: "The writers who maintain that the tragedy of Saint Bartholomew's day was the result of a long premeditation support their opinion by what occurred in the provinces; but it will be found, after careful examination, that these various incidents tend rather to prove the absence of any such premeditation."

Were orders sent from court to massacre the Huguenots? White, on the authority of Davila, De Thou, and expressions in certain letters, inclines to the opinion that verbal orders were sent. Gandy as positively asserts that no such orders were given. The provincial registers show no trace of such orders. Yet he admits secret orders, subsequently recalled by Charles, and gives a letter addressed to Montsoreau, dated August 26th, which is explicit. The massacres took place as follows: Meaux, August 25th; La Charité, August 27th; Saumur and Angers, August 29th; Lyons, August 30th; Troyes, September 2d; Bourges, September 15th; Rouen, September 17th; Romans, September 20th; Toulouse, September 23d; Bordeaux, October 3d; Poitiers, October 27th. They were thus continued from time to time for two months; long after Charles formally revoked any secret orders given on the spur of the moment. This point is involved in as great obscurity as any other connected with the affair.

Several letters current as to the matter, including those of De Tende and Orthez, are manifest forgeries. As to Saumur, White represents Montsoreau as killing all the Huguenots in that town. The only authority, Mémoires de l'Etat de France, says he killed all he could, and the whole charge rests on this feeble foundation. There is similar exaggeration elsewhere. White, speaking of Lyons, says: "In this city alone 4000 persons are estimated to have been killed;" but in his note adds that one authority says that they were all killed in one day, "which is not probable." He then cites another contemporary brochure setting down the total at Lyons at 1800; and he corrects the error of De Thou, who asserted that the Celestine canons allowed Huguenots to be killed in their monastery, when Protestant authorities admit that the religious saved the lives of those very fugitives.

What was the number slain in the provinces? The martyrologies, by a detailed estimate, make those killed in Paris 10,000, elsewhere 5168, and names 152 as identified in Paris, 634 in the provinces; but the estimate for Paris is of the very highest, and should, as we have seen, not exceed 2000. The very fact that, with researches and personal recollections, only 152 names could be recalled, being one in a hundred out of 10,000, while elsewhere one in eight was known, is very suspicious. Taking his figures for the provinces, it would reduce the whole number in France to about 7000.

After giving the calculations or guesses of various authors, ranging from 2000 to 100,000, White says: "If it be necessary to choose from these hap-hazard estimates, that of De Thou is preferable, from the calm, unexaggerating temper of the man." De Thou's estimate for all France was 30,000. Gandy thinks the number given by Popelinière (2000) nearer the truth.

Under the examination of impartial history, the massacre of St. Bartholomew dwindles really to far less in numbers, extent, and brutality than the massacre of the Irish Catholics under Cromwell; and does not greatly exceed the number of victims of the Huguenot outbreak in 1563.

One other point remains. Charles, on the 25th, represented the massacre in Paris as a collision between the houses of Guise and Chatillon; but from the 26th he uniformly charges a conspiracy against his person. This he announced to all the foreign courts in explanation. His letter to Gregory XIII. announced the escape of the royal family and the punishment of the conspirators. The nuncio Salviati, in his letters, shows a belief in the reality of the plot. At Rome, the Cardinal of Lorraine, brother of the murdered Guise, was high in influence. What his views and feelings would be on the receipt of the tidings of the discovery of a plot, and the sudden action of the king, it is easy to conceive. In his eyes it was a triumph of justice, religion, loyalty, and law. The pope received the same impression, and under it proceeded to chant a Te Deum at Santa Maria Maggiore. Processions followed. A medal, well known from its frequent reproduction, was struck. But in all this there is nothing to show that Rome knew of the intended massacre or counselled it. Gregory XIII. approved it, only as represented in the brief despatches of Charles IX. and the verbal statements of Beauvillé, to which they refer.

Nor did the clergy in France take any part. No bishop shared in the council, no priest or religious roused the minds of the people. They figure, indeed, in romances, but history is silent. Even in the most virulent pamphlets of the time only three are ever mentioned, the Bishop of Troyes, Sorbin, king's confessor at Orleans, and Father Edmond Auger, at Bordeaux. The Bishop of Troyes is charged with having approved the massacre there, but White does not even name the bishop in connection with the murders at that place, and says they were done by a drunken mob, and "filled the humane Catholics with horror."

At Orleans, White reduces the 1850 of the Martyrologe to 1400, and gives details, but is silent as to any action of Sorbin, or the terrible Franciscan who insulted the Huguenots, received their abjuration, and said Mass for them. Evidently, White found the charges against these clergymen too frivolous even for a stray allusion.

He attributes the massacre at Bordeaux to the preaching of Father Auger, but cites no authority. Fortunately, Auger is not an unknown man. His life has long been in circulation. He was a missionary, known for years among the Protestants, amid whom he had prosecuted his labors. He had suffered imprisonment for the faith; he had even been led to the gallows by order of the Baron des Adrets. So notorious were his charity, his virtue, and his merit, that the voice of Protestant and Catholic alike was raised to save him. Are we to believe on the vaguest of grounds that such a man suddenly became a monster of intolerance? White blushed to give his authority; he should have been ashamed to make the charge.

But it would scarcely do to let his book go forth without lugging in at least one priest. Of the proceedings at Rome he makes more capital. After stating what was done, and mistranslating a Latin phrase to make Charles IX. an angel, he says: "With such damning evidence against the Church of Rome, a recent defender of that church vainly contends that the clergy had no part in the massacre, and that the rejoicings were over rebels cut off in the midst of their rebellion, and not heretics murdered for their religion." The logic of this is admirable. The pope and cardinals ordered rejoicings on receiving despatches from the King of France, announcing that, having discovered a plot against his life and throne, he had put the rebels to the sword; therefore the Catholic clergy had a part in the massacre.

Apply the same to Drogheda. Parliament thanked God for Cromwell's massacre of the Irish after granting quarter, and rewarded a captain for throwing prisoners overboard at sea; therefore the Puritan clergy had a part in the massacre, and the evidence is damning.

The labors of Mr. White, however, on the whole, will do good. The wild assertions that fill our school-books and popular histories must give place to statements that will be justified by his work. It gives a standard to which we may appeal, and, if not all that we would claim, is so far on the way to impartiality that we may feel thankful for it.

It is not little to have wrung from the London Athenaeum the admission that the common view of St. Bartholomew is "one of the great historical errors which has been transmitted from teachers to taught during a long course of years."

From the French of Erckmanm and Chatrian.

The Invasion; or, Yegof The Fool.

Chapter I.

If you would know the story of the great invasion of 1814, even as the old hunter, Frantz of Hengst, related it to me, you must accompany me to the village of Charmes, in the Vosges. Thirty cottages, ranged along the bank of the Sarre, and roofed with slate and dark green moss, compose the hamlet; you can see the gables garlanded with ivy and withered honeysuckle—for winter is approaching—and the leafless hedges separating the little gardens from each other.

To the left, crowning a lofty mountain, rise the ruins of the ancient castle of Falkenstein, a fortalice, dismantled and demolished two hundred years ago by the Swedes. It is now but a scattered heap of stones, only approached by an old schlitte, or road for transporting felled trees, which pierces the forest. To the right, on the mountain-side, is seen the farm of Bois-de-Chênes, with its barns, stables, and sheds, on the flat roofs of which are placed great stones, to enable them to resist the furious northern blasts. A few cattle stray upon the heather, and a few goats clamber among the rocks.

Everything is silent. Children in gray trousers, bare-headed and bare-footed, are warming themselves around little fires, kindled near the edge of the wood, and the blue smoke curls slowly through the air; heavy white and gray clouds hang motionless over the valley, and far above these rise the sterile peaks of Grosmann and Donon.

You must know that the last house of the village—that with two glazed dormer windows upon the slanting roof, and the low door opening upon the muddy street—belonged, in 1813, to Jean-Claude Hullin, an ancient volunteer of '92; but since his return from the wars, the shoe, or, rather, sabot-maker of the village, and enjoying a large share of the esteem of the mountaineers. He was a stout, strongly built man, with gray eyes, thick lips, a short nose, and heavy, grizzled eyebrows. He was jovial and tender-hearted, and unable to refuse anything to his adopted daughter, Louise, whom he had obtained, when an infant, from a band of those miserable gypsies who, without hearth or home themselves, wander from door to door, soldering spoons and pans, and mending broken china. He, however, looked upon her as his own daughter, and never remembered her as the child of a strange race.

Besides this, his affection for his little girl, stout Jean-Claude had a few others. Next in order, he loved his cousin, the venerable mistress of Bois-de-Chênes, Catherine Lefevre, and her son, Gaspard, a fine young fellow, betrothed to Louise, but whom the conscription had carried off, leaving the two families to await the end of the campaign and his return.

Hullin often recalled, and always with enthusiasm, his campaigns of the Sambre-and-Meuse, of Italy and of Egypt. He often mused upon them, and sometimes at evening, when his day's work was done, he would wander to the saw-mill of Valtin, a gloomy building, formed of logs covered with the bark, which you see yonder at the bottom of the gorge. There he would sit, in the midst of coal-burners and wood-cutters, before the huge fire made of saw-dust, and while the heavy wheel kept turning, the sluice thundering, and the saw cutting, would he discourse of Hoche, of Kleber, and of General Bonaparte, whom he had seen a hundred times, and whose thin face, piercing eyes, and aquiline nose he drew over and over again.

Such was Jean-Claude Hullin, one of the old Gallic stock, loving strange adventures and deeds of heroic emprise, but bound by the feeling of duty to his toil from New-Year's day to Saint Sylvester's.

Louise, his gypsy daughter, was slight and graceful, with long, delicate hands, and eyes of so tender a blue that their glance seemed to melt their way to the depths of your soul; her skin was white as snow, her hair a gold-shot flaxen, soft as silk, and her shoulders drooped like those of some sweet sculptured saint at prayer. Her guileless smile, her musing brow, her whole form, seemed to recall the antique lay of Erhart the Minnesinger, wherein he says: "I saw a ray of light flash by, and mine eyes are yet dazed with its lustre. Was it the moon glancing through the leaves? Was it morning smiling beneath the woods? No, no! It was Edith, my love, who passed; and still mine eyes are dazed."

Louise loved the fields, the gardens, and the flowers. In spring she eagerly listened for the first notes of the lark, or sought the bluebells beneath the bushes, or watched for the return of the sparrows to the corners of the windows on the roof. She was ever the child of the wandering gypsies, only a little less wild than they; but Hullin forgave everything; he understood her nature, and often cried, laughing:

"My poor Louise, with the booty you bring us—your bunches of flowers and little birds—we should all die of hunger in a week."

But she would only smile, and he, as he returned to his work, exclaim:

"Bah! why should I scold? She is right to love the sunlight, and Gaspard will labor for both!"

So reasoned the good man, and days, weeks, and months rolled by in patient waiting for Gaspard's return.

But Gaspard returned not, and now for two months they had had no tidings of him.

One day, toward the middle of December, 1813, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, Hullin, bent over his work-bench, was finishing a pair of spiked sabots for Rochart, the wood-cutter. Louise had placed her flowers near the little stove which crackled on the hearth, while the monotonous tick-tack of the old village clock marked the seconds as they flew, and occasionally the tramp of clogs upon the frozen earth was heard without, and a head covered with a hat or wrapped in a hood passed the window. At length, Hullin, glancing through the panes of the window, suddenly stopped his labor, and stood with both eyes wide open, as one gazing at some unusual sight.

At the corner of the street, just opposite the tavern of the Three Pigeons, a strange figure was advancing, surrounded by a crowd of jumping, laughing boys, each vying with the other in shouting at the top of his voice: "King of Diamonds! King of Diamonds!" In truth, a stranger figure could scarcely be imagined. Fancy a man with a grave face and red beard; a gloomy eye, straight nose, eyebrows meeting, a circlet of tin upon his head, an iron-gray shepherd dog-skin flapping upon his back, the two fore-paws knotted around his neck; his breast covered with little copper crosses, his legs with a sort of gray stuff trousers, and his feet bare. A large raven with lustrous black wings was perched upon his shoulder. One might think, from the majesty of his air and gait, that an ancient Merovingian king had come back to earth; and, indeed, he carried a short stick cut to the shape of a sceptre, while with his right hand he gesticulated magnificently, pointing to the skies and apostrophizing his attendants.

Every door opened as he passed, and curious faces were pressed against every window-pane. A few old women upon the outside stairs of their cottages called to him, but he deigned no reply; others descended to the street and would have barred his passage, but he, with head erect and brows haughtily raised, waved them aside.

"Hold!" said Hullin, "here is Yegof. I did not expect to see him again this winter, it is contrary to his habit; and what can he mean by returning in such weather as this?"

Louise, laying aside her distaff, ran to look at the King of Diamonds; for the appearance of the fool in the beginning of winter was quite an event, and the source of amusement to many who were glad to kill time in the taverns, listening to the story of his imaginary power and glory; others, especially women, felt a vague fear of him; for the ideas of fools, as everybody knows, are sometimes drawn from another world than this—to them is confided the knowledge of the past and future; the only difficulty is in understanding them, for their words have always a double sense—one for the ears of the coarse and vulgar, and one, far different, for wise and lofty souls. Moreover, the thoughts of Yegof, above those of all other fools, were extraordinary—not to say sublime. No one knew whence he came, whither he went; he wandered through the land like a soul in pain; he vaunted the greatness of long extinct nations, and called himself Emperor of Austrasia, of Polynesia, and other far-off places. Volumes might be written of the strength and beauty of his castles, his fortresses, and his palaces, the number and grandeur of which he related with an air of much modesty and simplicity. He spoke of his stables, his coursers, the officers of his crown, his ministers, counsellors, and intendants, and never did he mistake their names or attribute the particular merits of one to another; but he complained bitterly of having been dethroned by an accursed race, and Sapience Coquelin, the wise old woman of the village, as well as others, wept whenever he referred to the subject. Then would he, lifting his hand toward heaven, cry out:

"Be mindful, O women! The hour is at hand! The spirit of darkness flees afar! The ancient race, the masters of your masters, come sweeping on like the billows of the sea!"

Every spring he wandered for weeks among the ruins which crown the Vosges at Nideck, Geroldseck, Lutzelbourg, and Turkestein—former dwellings of the great ones of earth, but now the refuge of bats and owls. There would he declaim on the long past splendor of his realms, and plan the subjection of his revolted people.

Jean-Claude Hullin laughed at all this, not being fond of approaching the invisible world; but the fool's words troubled Louise exceedingly, especially when the hoarse voice and flapping wings of the raven added to their wild effect.

Yegof marched majestically down the street, turning neither to the right nor the left, and the girl, seeing that his eyes were fixed upon her habitation, exclaimed:

"Father, father! he is coming here!"

"Very likely," replied Hullin. "He, no doubt, needs a pair of sabots in a cold like this, and if he asks them I should be sorry to refuse."

Yegof was some fifty paces from the cottage, and the tumult continued to increase. The boys, pulling at his strange garment, shouted, "Diamonds! Spades! Clubs!" till they were hoarse, when, suddenly turning round, he raised his sceptre, and cried furiously, though still with an air of majesty:

"Away! accursed race! away—or my dogs shall tear ye!"

This threat only redoubled the cries and shouts of laughter; but at this moment, Hullin appearing at the door with a long rod, and promising its speedy application to the backs of five or six of the noisiest, the band soon dispersed in terror, for many of them had felt its weight. Then turning to the fool, he said:

"Come in, Yegof, and take a seat by the fire."

"Call me not Yegof," replied the latter, with a look of offended dignity. "I am Luitprand, King of Austrasia and Polynesia."

"True, true, I remember," said Jean-Claude; "but, Yegof, or Luitprand, come in. It is cold; try to warm yourself."

"I will enter," answered the fool, "for reasons of state—to form an alliance between two most puissant nations."

"Good! Let us talk over it."

Yegof, stooping in the doorway, entered dreamily, and saluted Louise by lowering his sceptre. But the raven refused to follow. Spreading his broad black wings, he swept around the cottage and then dashed against the windows, as if to break them.

"Hans!" cried the fool, "beware! I am coming."

But the bird of ill omen fastened its pointed talons in the leaden sash, and flapped its wings until the window shook, as long as his master remained within. Louise gazed affrightedly at both. Yegof seated himself in the large leathern armchair behind the stove as on a throne, and throwing haughty glances around, said:

"I come straight from Jerome to conclude an alliance with thee, Hullin. Thou art not ignorant that the face of thy daughter hath pleased me. I am here to demand her in marriage."

Louise blushed, and Hullin burst into a peal of laughter.

"You laugh!" cried the fool angrily. "You will live to regret it! This alliance alone can save thee from the ruin which threatens thee and thine. Even now my armies are advancing; they cover the earth, numberless as the forest leaves in summer. What will avail the might of thy people against that of mine? Ye will be conquered, crushed, enslaved, as for centuries you were, for I, Luitprand, King of Austrasia and Polynesia, have willed it. All things shall be as they were, and then—remember me!"

He lifted his hand solemnly on high.

"Remember the past. You were beaten, despised serfs; and we—the old nations of the north—we trod your necks beneath our feet. We burdened your backs with heavy stones that our strong castles and deep dungeons might be built. We yoked you to our ploughs; you fled before us like chaff before the tempest. Remember, and tremble!"

"I remember it all well," replied Hullin, still laughing, "but you know we had our revenge."

"Ay," said the fool, knitting his brows, "but that time has passed. My warriors outnumber the sands of the shore, and your blood shall flow like rivers to the ocean. I know ye, and for a thousand years have marked ye!"

"Bah!" said Hullin.

"Yes, this arm vanquished ye when we first sought the hearts of your forests. This hand bent your necks to the yoke, and will again. Because you are brave, you think that you will be for ever masters of France; but we have divided your fair land, and will again divide it between ourselves. Alsace and Lorraine shall again be German; Brittany and Normandy shall again belong to the Northmen; Flanders and the South, to Spain. France will be a petty kingdom girdling Paris, with one of the ancient race its king, and you will not dare to murmur—you will be very patient— ha! ha! ha!"

Yegof laughed loudly in his turn.

Hullin, who knew little of history, was astounded at the fool's learning.

"Bah!" he exclaimed again. "Enough of this, Yegof. Try a little soup to warm your blood."

"I do not ask for food," replied the fool; "I ask your daughter in marriage. Give her willingly, and I will raise you to the foot of my throne; refuse, and my armies shall take her by force."

As he spoke, the poor wretch gazed on Louise with looks of the deepest admiration.

"How beautiful she is!" he murmured. "How her brow will grace a crown! Rejoice, sweet maiden, for thou shalt be Queen of Austrasia."

"Listen, Yegof," said Hullin: "I am flattered by your preference; and it shows that you know how to appreciate beauty; but my daughter is already betrothed to Gaspard Lefevre."

"Enough!" cried the fool, rising angrily, "we will now speak no more of it; but, Hullin," he continued, resuming his solemn tone, "this is my first demand. I will twice renew it. Hearest thou? Twice! If you persist in your obstinacy, woe, woe to thee and thy race!"

"Will you not take your soup, then, Yegof?"

"No!" shouted the fool; "I will accept nothing from you until you have consented—nothing!" And waving his sceptre, he sallied forth.

Hullin burst into another peal of laughter.

"Poor fellow!" he exclaimed; "his eyes turned toward the pot in spite of himself; his teeth are chattering; but his folly is stronger than even cold and hunger."

"He frightens me," said Louise, blushing, notwithstanding, as she thought of his strange request.

Yegof kept on the Valtin road. Their eyes followed him as his distance from them grew greater. Still his stately march, his grave gestures, continued, though no one was now near to observe him. Night was falling fast; and soon the tall form of the King of Diamonds was blended with and lost in the winter twilight.

Chapter II.

The same evening, after supper, Louise, taking her spinning-wheel with her, went to visit Mother Rochart, at whose cottage the good matrons and young girls of the village often met, and remained until near midnight, relating old legends, chatting of the rain, the weather, baptisms, marriages, the departure or return of conscripts, or any other matters of interest.

Hullin, sitting before his little copper lamp, nailed the sabots of the old wood-cutter. He no longer gave a thought to Yegof. His hammer rose and fell upon the thick wooden soles mechanically, while a thousand fancies roamed through his mind. Now his thoughts wandered to Gaspard, so long unheard of; now to the campaign, so long prolonged. The lamp dimly lighted the little room; without, all was still. The fire grew dull; Jean-Claude arose to pile on another log, and then resumed his seat, murmuring:

"This cannot last; we shall receive a letter one of these days."

The village clock struck nine; and as Hullin returned to his work, the door opened, and Catherine Lefevre, the mistress of the Bois-de-Chênes farm, appeared on the threshold, to the astonishment of the sabot-maker, for it was not her custom to be abroad at such an hour.

Catherine Lefevre might have been sixty years of age, but her form was straight and erect as at thirty. Her clear, gray eyes and hooked nose seemed to resemble the eyes and beak of the eagle. Her thin cheeks and the drooping corners of her mouth betokened habits of thought, and gave a sad and somewhat bitter expression to her face. A long brown hood covered her head and fell over her shoulders. Her whole appearance bespoke a firm and resolute character, and inspired in the beholder a feeling of respect, not untinged with fear.

"You here, Catherine?" exclaimed Hullin in his surprise.

"Even I, Jean-Claude," replied the old woman calmly. "I wish to speak with you. Is Louise at home?"

"She is at Madeleine Rochart's."

"So much the better," said Catherine, seating herself at the corner of the work-bench.

Hullin gazed fixedly at her. There was something mysterious and unusual in her manner which caused in him a vague feeling of alarm.

"What has happened?" he asked, laying aside his hammer.

"Yegof the fool passed last night at the farm."

"He was here this afternoon," said Hullin, who attached no importance to the fact.

"Yes," continued Catherine, in a low tone; "he passed last night with us, and in the evening, at this hour, before the kitchen fire, his words were fearful."

"Fearful!" muttered the sabot-maker, more and more astonished, for he had never before seen the old woman in such a state of alarm. "What did he say, Catherine?"

"He spoke of things which awakened strange dreams."

"Dreams! You are mocking me."

"No, no," she answered. And then, after a moment of silence, fixing her eyes upon the wondering Hullin, she continued:

"Last evening, our people were seated, after supper, around the fire in the kitchen, and Yegof among them. He had, as usual, regaled us with the history of his treasures and castles. It was about nine o'clock, and the fool sat at the corner of the blazing hearth. Duchene, my laborer, was mending Bruno's saddle; Robin, the herdsman, was making a basket; Annette arranging her dishes on the cupboard; and I spinning before going to bed. Without, the dogs were barking at the moon, and it was bitter cold. We were speaking of the winter, which Duchene said would be severe, for he had seen large flocks of wild geese. The raven, perched on the corner of the chimney-piece, with his beak buried in his ruffled feathers, seemed to sleep."

The old woman paused a moment, as if to collect her thoughts; her eyes sought the floor, her lips closed tightly together, and a strange paleness overspread her face.

"What in the name of sense is she coming at?" thought Hullin.

She resumed:

"Yegof, at the edge of the hearth, with his tin crown upon his head and his sceptre laid across his knees, seemed absorbed in thought. He gazed at the huge black chimney, the great stone mantel-shelf, with its sculptured trees and men, and at the smoke which rose in heavy wreaths among the quarters of bacon. Suddenly he struck his sceptre upon the floor, and cried out like one in a dream, 'Yes, I have seen it all—all—long since!' And while we gazed on him with looks of astonishment, he proceeded:

"'Ay, in those days the forests of firs were forests of oak. Nideck, Dagsberg, Falkenstein—all the castles now old and ruined were yet unbuilt. In those days wild bulls were hunted through the woods; salmon were plenty in the Sarre; and you, the fair-haired race, buried in the snows six months of the year, lived upon milk and cheese, for you had great flocks on Hengst, Schneeberg, Grosmann, and Donon. In summer you hunted as far as the banks of the Rhine; as far as the Moselle, the Meuse. All this can I remember!'

"Was it not strange, Jean-Claude?" said the old woman. "As the fool spoke, I seemed, too, to remember those scenes, as if viewed in a dream. I let fall my distaff, and old Duchene and all the others stopped to listen. The fool continued:

"'Ay, it was long ago! You had already begun to build your tall chimneys; and you surrounded your habitations with palisades whose points had been hardened in the fire. Within you kept great dogs, with hanging cheeks, who bayed night and day.'

"Then he burst into a peal of crazy laughter, crying:

"'And you thought yourselves the lords of the land—you, the pale-faced and blue-eyed—you, who lived on milk and cheese, and touched no flesh save in autumn at your hunts—you thought yourselves lords of the mountain and the plain—when we, the red-bearded, came from the sea—we, who loved blood and the din of battle. 'Twas a rude war, ours. It lasted weeks and months; and your old chieftainess, Margareth, of the clan of the Kilberix, shut up in her palisades, surrounded by her dogs and her warriors, defended herself like a she-wolf robbed of her young. But five moons passed, and hunger came; the gates of her stronghold opened, that its defenders might fly; and we, ambushed in the brook, slew them all—all—save the children. She alone defended herself to the last, and I, Luitprand, clove her gray head, and spared her blind father, the oldest among the old, that I might chain him like a dog to my castle gate.'

"Then, Hullin," said the old woman, "the fool sang a long ballad—the plaint of the old man chained to his gate. It was sad, sad as the Miserere. It chilled our very blood. But he laughed until old Duchene, in a transport of rage, threw himself upon him to strangle him; but the fool is strong, and hurled him back. Then brandishing his sceptre furiously, he shouted:

"'To your knees, slaves! to your knees! My armies are advancing. The earth trembles beneath them. Nideck, Haut-Barr, Dagsberg, Turkestein, will again tower above you. To your knees!'

"Never did I gaze upon a more fearful figure; but seeing my people about to fall upon him, I interposed in his defence. 'He is but a fool,' I cried. 'Are you not ashamed to mind his words?' This quieted them, but I could not close my eyes the entire night. His story—the song of the old man—rang through my ears, and seemed mingled with the barking of our dogs and the din of combat. Hullin, what think you of it? I cannot banish his threats from my mind!"

"I should think," said the sabot-maker, with a look of pity not unmixed with a sort of sorrowful sarcasm—"I should think, Catherine, if I did not know you so well, that you were losing your senses—you and Duchene and Robin and all the rest."

"You do not understand these matters," said the old woman in a calm and grave tone; "but were you never troubled by things of like nature?"

"Do you mean that you believe this nonsense of Yegof?"

"Yes, I believe it."

"You believe it! You, Catherine Lefevre! If it was Mother Rochart, I would say nothing; but you—!"

He arose as if angry, untied his apron, shrugged his shoulders, and then suddenly, again seating himself, exclaimed:

"Do you know who this fool is? I will tell you. He is one of those German schoolmasters who turn old women's heads with their Mother Goose stories; whose brains are cracked with overmuch study, and who take their visions for actual events—their crazy fancies for reality. I always looked upon Yegof as one of them. Remember the mass of names he knows; he talks of Brittany and Austrasia—of Polynesia and Nideck and the banks of the Rhine, and so gives an air of probability to his vagaries. In ordinary times, Catherine, you would think as I do; but your mind is troubled at receiving no news from Gaspard, and the rumors of war and invasion which are flying around distract you; you do not sleep, and you look upon the sickly fancies of a poor fool as gospel truth."

"Not so, Hullin—not so. If you yourself had heard Yegof—"

"Come, come!" cried the good man. "If I had heard him, I would have laughed at him, as I do now. Do you know that he has demanded the hand of Louise, that he might make her Queen of Austrasia?"

Catherine could not help smiling; but soon resuming her serious air, she said:

"All your reasons, Jean-Claude, cannot convince me; but I confess that Gaspard's silence frightens me. I know my boy, and he has certainly written. Why have his letters not arrived? The war goes ill for us, Hullin; all the world is against us. They want none of our Revolution. While we were the masters, while we crowned victory with victory, they were humble enough, but since the Russian misfortune their tone is far different."

"There, there, Catherine; you are wandering; everything is black to you. What disturbs me most is not receiving any news from without; we are living here as in a country of savages; we know nothing of what is going on abroad. The Austrians or the Cossacks might fall upon us at any moment, and we be taken completely by surprise."

Hullin observed that as he spoke the old woman's look became anxious, and despite himself he felt the influence of the fears she spoke of.

"Listen, Catherine," said he suddenly; "as long as you talk reasonably I shall not gainsay you. You speak now of things that are possible. I do not believe they will attack us, but it is better to set our hearts at ease. I intended going to Phalsbourg this week. I shall set out to-morrow. In such a city—one which is, moreover, a post-station—they should have certain tidings of what is going on. Will you believe the news I bring back?"

"I will."

"Then it is understood. I will start early to-morrow morning. It is five leagues off. I shall have returned by about six in the evening, and you shall see, Catherine, that your mournful notions lack reason."

"I hope so," said she, rising; "indeed I hope so. You have somewhat reassured me, Jean-Claude, and I may sleep better than I did last night. Good-night, Jean-Claude."

Chapter III.

The next morning at daybreak, Hullin, in his gray-cloth Sunday small-clothes, his ample brown velvet coat, his red vest with its copper buttons, his head covered with his mountaineer's slouched hat, the broad brim turned up in front over his ruddy face, took the road to Phalsbourg, a stout staff in his hand.

Phalsbourg is a small fortified city on the imperial road from Strasbourg to Paris. It commands the slope of Saverne, the defiles of Haut-Barr, of Roche-Plate, Bonne-Fontaine, and Graufthal. Its bastions, advanced works, and demi-lunes run zigzag over a rocky plateau; afar off you would think you could clear the walls at a bound; a nearer approach shows a ditch, a hundred feet wide and thirty deep, and beyond the dark ramparts cut in the rock itself. All the rest of the city, save the town-hall, the two gates of France and Germany with their pointed arches, and the tops of the two magazines, is concealed behind the glacis. Such is the little city, which is not lacking in a certain kind of grandeur, especially when we cross its bridges, and pass its heavy gates, studded with iron spikes. Within the walls, the houses are low, regularly built of cut stone in straight streets. A military atmosphere pervades everything.

Hullin, whose robust health and joyous nature gave him little care for the future, pushed gayly onward, regarding the stories of defeat and invasion which filled the air as so many malicious inventions. Judge, then, of his stupefaction when, on coming in sight of the town, he saw that the clock-tower stood no longer, not a garden or an orchard, not a walk or a bush could he see; everything within cannon-shot was utterly destroyed. A few wretches were collecting the remaining pieces of their cottages to carry them to the city. Nothing could be seen to the verge of the horizon but the lines of the ramparts. Jean-Claude was thunder-struck; for a few moments he could neither utter a word nor advance a step.

"Aha!" he muttered at last, "things are not going well. The enemy is expected."

Then his warrior instincts rising, his brown cheeks flushed with anger.

"It is those rascal Austrians, and Prussians, and Russians, who have caused all this," he cried, shaking his staff; "but let them beware! They shall rue it!"

His wrath grew as he advanced. Twenty minutes later he entered the city at the end of a long train of wagons, each drawn by five or six horses, and dragging enormous trunks of trees, destined to form a block-house on the Place d'Armes. Between drivers, peasants, and neighing, struggling, kicking horses, a mounted gendarme, Father Kels, rode grimly, seeming to hear nothing of the tumult around, but ever and anon saying, in a deep base voice:

"Courage! my friends, courage! We can make two journeys more before night, and you will have deserved well of your country."

Jean-Claude crossed the bridge.

A new spectacle presented itself within the walls. All were absorbed in the work of defence. Every gate was open. Men, women, and children labored, ran, or helped to carry powder and shot. Occasionally, groups of three, four, or half a dozen would collect to hear the news.

"Neighbors," one would say, "a courier has arrived at full speed. He entered by the French gate."

"Then he announces the coming of the National Guard from Nancy."

"Or, perhaps, a train from Metz."

"You are right. Sixteen-pound shot are wanting, as well as canister. They are breaking up the stoves to supply its place."

Some of the citizens, in their shirt-sleeves, were barricading their windows with heavy beams and mattresses; others were rolling tubs of water before their doors. Their enthusiasm excited Hullin's admiration.

"Good!" he cried, "good! The allies will be well received here!"

Opposite the college, the squeaking voice of the sergeant, Harmantier, was shrieking:

"Be it known that the casemates will be opened, to the end that each man may bring a mattress and two blankets; and moreover, that messieurs the commissioners are about to commence their round of inspection to see that each inhabitant has three months' provisions in his house, which he must show: Given this twentieth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and thirteen. Jean Pierre Meunier, Governor."

Strange scenes, both serious and comic, succeeded every minute.

Hullin was no longer the same man. Memories of the march, the bivouac, the rattle of musketry, the charge, the shout of victory, came rushing upon him. His eyes sparkled and his heart beat fast, and the thoughts of the glory to be gained in a brave defence, a struggle to the death with a haughty enemy, filled his brain.

"Good faith!" said he to himself, "all goes well! I have made clogs enough in my life, and if the time has come to shoulder the musket once more, so much the better. We will show these Prussians and Austrians that we have not forgotten the roll of the charge!"

Thus mused the brave old man, but his exultation was not of long duration.

Before the church, on the Place d'Armes, were fifteen or twenty wagons full of wounded, arriving from Leipsic and Hanau. Many poor fellows, pale, emaciated, with eyes half-closed and glassy, or rolling in agony, some with arms and legs already amputated, some with wounds not yet even bandaged, lay awaiting death. Near by, a few worn-out horses were eating their scanty provender, while their drivers, poor peasants pressed into service in Alsace, wrapped in their long, ragged cloaks, slept, in spite of cold, on the steps of the church. It was terrible to see the men, wrapped in their gray overcoats, heaped upon bloody straw; one holding his broken arm upon his knee; another binding his head with an old handkerchief; a third already dead, serving as a seat for the living. Hullin stood transfixed. He could not withdraw his eyes from the scene. Human misery in its intensest forms fascinates us. We would see how men die—how they face death; and the best among us are not free from this horrible curiosity. It seems to us as if eternity were about to disclose its secrets.

On the first wagon to the right were two carabineers in sky-blue jackets—two giants—but their strong frames were bowed with pain; they seemed two statues crushed beneath some enormous mass of stone. One, with thick red mustaches and sunken cheeks, glared with his stony eyes, as if awakened from a frightful nightmare; the other, bent double, his hands blue with cold, and his shoulder torn by a grape-shot, was becoming momentarily weaker, but from time to time started up, muttering like one in a dream. Behind, infantrymen were stretched in couples, most of them struck by bullets. They seemed to bear their fate with more fortitude than did the giants, not speaking, except that a few, the youngest, shrieked furiously for water and bread. In the next wagon, a plaintive voice—the voice of a conscript—called upon his mother, while his older comrades smiled sarcastically at his cry.

Now and then a shudder ran through them all, as a man—or mayhap several—would rise, and with a long sigh fall back. This was death.

While Hullin stood silent, the blood frozen in his heart, a citizen, Sôme, the baker, came forth from his house, carrying a large pot of boiled meat. Then you should have seen those spectres struggle, their eyes glance, their nostrils dilate; a new life seemed to animate them, for the poor wretches were dying of hunger.

Good Father Sôme, with tears in his eyes, approached, saying:

"I am coming, my children. A little patience, and you will be supplied."

But scarcely had he reached the first wagon, when the huge carabineer with the sunken cheeks plunged his arm to the elbow in the boiling pot, seized a piece of meat, and concealed it beneath his jacket. It was done like a flash, and savage cries arose on all sides. Men who had not strength enough to move would have strangled their comrade. He pressed the precious morsel to his breast, his teeth were already in it, and he glared around like a wild beast. At the cries which arose, an old soldier—a sergeant—sprang from a neighboring wagon; he understood all at a glance, and without useless delay tore the meat from the carabineer, saying:

"Thou deservest to have none. Let us divide; it will make ten rations."

"We are only eight," said a wounded man, calm in appearance, but with eyes glistening in his bronzed face. "You see, sergeant, that those two there are dying; it is no use to waste food."