When lovely woman stoops to folly, The only art her guilt to cover, A man influenced by true religion may fall once and again, but had the character of Condé been such as the leader of a religious movement ought to possess, no woman of Catherine's discernment would have conceived such a scheme, and the first advances in executing it would have been repelled with scorn. conduct of the valiant, the liberal, and the accom- the page perceived that his mistress had breathed plished prince? But here, unfortunately, we her last. must stop; we look in vain for the high principle of sound religion, which shines in private as well as in public, and is ready to sacrifice all personal gratification in the service of God. Condé fought in the cause of the Gospel, but he did so rather as a crusader than as a Christian; he valued his life little, for he was a truly brave soldier; but his own pleasures were the rock on which he split; the temptations of a dissipated court were more dangerous weapons than the swords of his opponents; and he who could conquer in the field, or take a hostile city, was yet unable to rule his own spirit, and was foiled in the conflict with his own ill-regulated passions. Catherine, ever watchful of her advantage, was too wise to overlook the weak point of the prince, and soon set snares for him, which he was unable to escape. Among the daughters of the queen, were two young ladies of the name of Limeuil; to the elder of these, who was distinguished for her fine figure, her taste in dress, her beauty, and her wit, the queen confided the task of gaining the affections of the prince. The business was but too easy, for the victim was willing, and, like Samson, only too ready to betray his dearest secrets to his treacherous charmer. Catherine obtained her object, and learned the intentions of the Hugonots; but La Belle Limeuil discovered too late that she had ventured on dangerous ground; that she had been tampering not only with the affections of Condé, but with her own; and what she had considered as a gay frolic, ended in a melancholy realty; she had fallen deeply in love with the knight she had intended to betray, and she now found herself deserted in her turn, like some unfaithful damsel of romance. The widow of the Maréchal de St. André had also set her affections upon the Prince de Condé; she bestowed upon him the most valuable gifts; among others, the splendid Again we meet with Condé under circumstances where religious principle is tried to the uttermost-the near prospect of death. By the treachery of Francis II., he and his brother Anthony were seized, and, after a mock trial, were left under sentence of death on a vague charge of treason. The Cardinal of Lorraine was most anxious to have Condé executed at once, but his connection with the royal family was pleaded in his behalf, and the vacillating spirit of Catherine was anxious to be free from his influence, but afraid of the power of his rivals: under such uncertainty we might expect some traits of religious feeling; but the contemporary accounts give us little on the subject. The death of Francis changed the whole face of affairs, and one of Condé's attendants, who went to communicate the intelligence to him, found him quietly playing at cards with the officer who guarded him; and being afraid to tell him directly, made signs that he had something to communicate. The prince let fall a card, and stooping to pick it up, his attendant whispered in his ear, "Our friend is done palace of St. Valery, which her husband had up." The prince finished his game without alterbuilt; but Condé, equally unfaithful to his religion ing a feature. Much, however, as we must reand his knighthood, received the gifts, but deserted gret the want of religious feeling in the prince, the giver. The tragedy, however, does not end we must remember the difference between those here; the beginning of sin is like the letting out of water; his excellent wife, who had long shut her eyes to his irregularities, died shortly after, the victim of abused affections; and the Demoiselle de Limeuil found herself pointed at by a censorious court, not because she had been guilty of any irregularity, but because she had been fool enough to be caught in her own snare. Her health began to sink, and she retired from the eyes of the world; she was passionately fond of music, and, on one occasion, she desired her page to play her a melancholy air, where "tout est perdu" is the burden of the song. When this had been once or twice repeated, she called on him to play it over again, with increased emphasis, until she should desire him to leave off; he did so for some minutes, and she seemed to join in the chorus, but suddenly her voice ceased, and, on looking round, times and the present, and make every allowance for the differences of education and the darkness of the age. Condé was sincere in his attachment to Protestantism, and never wavered in its cause. Sometimes at the head of a victorious army; sometimes a prisoner in the tent of his rival, and meeting him with the courtesy of an old and valued friend; sometimes flying from a superior force, unable to pay his mercenaries, and with equal reason to fear his own troops and the royal army, he displays a degree of heroism which we seldom meet with, except in romance. The Alcibiades of modern history, fond of pleasure, but faithful to his cause, anxious on the subject of religion, but sometimes inclined to superstition, erring in many instances, but beloved by all around him, his character and adventures give an opening for the historian which modern events seldom afford, and we can assure our readers that our ises. The same evening a mysterious note was author has not neglected the opportunity. We intercepted, containing these ominous words: extract a passage from his history. Condé, who regarded a battle as inevitable, wished to halt and prepare to meet the enemy; but the admiral, judging, from the excessive reserve that had already been shown, that this movement was intended as a demonstration only, was for proceeding without delay. His advice prevailed, and the dawn of the 19th found the Hugonot army still upon their march. "I will relate," says Beza, "two things that occurred, which seemed as if sent from God as presages of what was approaching; and that I can attest for true, having seen the one with my own eyes, and heard the other with my own ears. The first is that the prince, crossing a little river at Maintenon, (he passed the Maintenon on the 17th,) where some of the lower orders had assembled to see him go by-an aged woman flung herself into the river, which was deep, (the rivulet having been trampled in by the passing of the cavalry,) laid hold of his boot, and said, 'Go on, prince, you will suffer much, but God will be with you.' To which he added, Mother, pray for me,' and went on. The other was, that in the evening, the prince being in bed, and talking with some who had remained in his chamber, held the following discourse to a minister who had been there, and was reading prayers, (probably Beza himself.) We shall have a battle to-morrow,' said he, 'or I am much deceived, in spite of what the admiral says. I know one ought not to attend to dreams, and yet I will tell you what I dreamed last night. It was that it seemed to me that I had given battle three times, one after the other; finally obtaining the victory-and that I saw our three enemies dead; but that I also had received my death-wound. So, having ordered their bodies to be laid one upon the other, and I upon the top of all, I there rendered up my soul to God.' The minister answered, as usually a sensible man would answer in such cases, that such visions were not to be regarded. Yet strange to say, (adds Beza,) the dream seemed con firmed by the result. The next day the Maréchal de St. André was killed, then the Duke of Guise, then the constable, and finally, after the third engagement, the prince himself." -Reformation, vol. i., p. 400. "The stag is in the toils! the hunt is ready!" and at the dead of night an unknown cavalier galloped by the castle, sounding his hunting-horn and crying, "The great stag has broken cover at Noyers." Condé acted on these warnings, and escaped with his brother's family and his own, closely pursued by the king's troops. He crossed the Loire at a ford not commonly known, the prince holding his infant in his arms. Though the river was generally too deep for crossing, yet on this occasion there was no difficulty in passing the ford, until Condé and his troop of about 150 persons had landed in safety. Immediately, however, as if by a special interposition of Providence, the stream rose above its usual height, foaming and rushing with a sudden torrent, so that the pursuers, who crowded rapidly upon the further bank, saw that they were too late, and their expected prey had escaped from their hands. Condé was killed at the battle of Jarnac, after he had surrendered as a prisoner of war; he is supposed to have owed his death to the treachery of the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III. The man of the highest sense of religion, in our acceptation of the word, was the Admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny. To his influence may be attributed the strictness and sobriety which usually characterized the Protestant army. Games of chance were strictly forbidden; swearing and plundering were severely punished; and the forms of religion steadily observed. "I fear," said Coligny to one who complimented him on these subjects, "that it will not last long-a young hermit is an old devil:" "the French infantry will soon become tired of their virtue, and put the cross into the fire." His predictions were only too true, as the event proved. Coligny him self combined the characters of a soldier and a reformer more than any of his contemporaries. Brantôme compares him with the Duke of Guise. He says they were diamonds of the first water, on the superior excellence of which it would be impossible to decide. They had been intimate friends in youth, wearing the same dresses, taking the same side in the tournaments, joining in the same mischievous pranks, and encouraging each other in extravagant follies. Coligny, however, soon grew tired of youthful excesses; he seems to have understood the principle Again, in 1568, when Lorraine and Alva had first persuaded the Hugonots to lay down their arms, and then proclaimed the decrees of the Council of Trent, Condé had retired to his country seat. In the mean time, strange reports had been spread that no Protestant would be alive against the vintage: that Charles must either exterminate them, or retire to a monastery; that to keep faith with heretics is a weakness, and to murder them a service acceptable to God. Several of the adherents of Condé had been slain, some as if by the king's order, some by popular violence. The clubs of Paris had begun to show their power and had declared for the pope; and the first movement was made for the formation of the celebrated ligue. Condé naturally began to fear for his personal safety, and while consulting with Coligny on the proper course to be adopted, Coligny's son-in-law arrived, bearing friendly letters from the king, but advising his relations not to trust the royal prom-ment; and he is said, by his influence during the Nec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum,for as a man we never find him drawn into the excesses of the court, or imitating his friend Condé in the pursuit of pleasure. His rules for the conduct of his soldiers were adopted even by his enemies; and he was the first who raised the character of a French army, and placed it above the level of a horde of barbarous invaders, whose chief object was plunder, without respect even to their own allies. He attempted to procure for France a just system of representative governcivil wars, to have preserved the lives and proper- exterminate all recusants. Some of the more ties of more than a million of persons. His wife, moderate party did not expect to be able to bind Charlotte de Laval, was devoted to the Protestant the opinions of others; these only said that outcause. She established in his family a system ward conformity to established usage should be of propriety seldom witnessed in the households sufficient; and that no inquiry should be made as of the great. We have a minute description of to religious sentiments, provided only the people Coligny's household, the regularity of his hours, should attend mass and confession. The Hugohis family prayers, and his instruction of his de- nots themselves never expected equal privileges pendents; but he seems to have stood almost with the dominant party; all they asked was, leave alone: few in that age could appreciate his virtues; to have their own churches, and administer the and though his influence over the Prince de Condé sacraments; and they even proposed that they was exerted for good, yet he was but one among should pay double taxes as a test of their sincerity. a multitude, and his salutary influence was often These reasonable demands were frequently promoverborne by the evils incident to a civil war. ised, but the promises were broken as soon as the This great man survived the other leaders of his party, and was the first victim of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Another reason why intelligence and Protestantism made little progress was the ignorance of the times. We do not speak so much of the great body of the people, as of those who may be supposed to have received the best education. When the Duke of Guise was wounded by an assassin, during the siege of Orleans, the surgeons at first augured favorably of his recovery, but they evidently killed him by their unskilful treatment: first, they widened and cauterized with a hot silver Hugonots had laid down their arms. We Persecution, burning heretics by legal warrant, were as common as in England during the reign of Bloody Mary; but France went a step further than England, and often murdered the recusants without the shadow or pretence of law. can scarcely imagine, even from the worst portions of the history of England, that a nobleman of high rank, like the Duke of Guise, should set ut on a progress to his country seat, and suddenly massacre a whole congregation of men, women, and children, while on his journey. Yet this took place at Vassy, on Sunday morning, the first instrument, to destroy the effects of the poison of March, 1562. The duke declared that it was which they imagined to be in the powder and bullets. They were astonished to find that the bullet had made a larger hole at its exit than at its entrance, and therefore agreed to open the wound again in order to look for it, though the age of the moon pointed out the day as unfavorable. They then, with their fingers, examined done against his will, and in consequence of an insult offered by the Hugonots to some of his followers; but whatever be the cause, the melancholy effects were undeniable. The massacre of Vassy was the signal for similar excesses throughout the kingdom; priests were seen pointing out their victims to the soldiers, lest any should es both sides of the wound, and found all safe and cape; and though the duke asked pardon on his sound: not satisfied with the progress which death-bed for being the cause of so much blood shed, yet, Brantôme tells us, that while he solemnly denied having done it intentionally, he at the same time made light of the matter. It was asserted by the Hugonots, in their petition to the king, that 3000 lives had been lost at Vassy, and by the excesses which followed. The Duke of Guise was not the only royalist who made light of human life: Montluc, one of nature was making, they made another opening across the wound, and passed a piece of linen through it, by way of a seton, to keep it open; and though this was on the fourth day of the moon, the duke was better though his fever increased. Some of his friends wanted him to try the effect of enchantments-we confess we should have preferred them to the treatment of his surgeons-but the duke refused them as unlawful the king's generals, coolly tells us, that "there means, and declared that he should prefer death is no such thing as a prisoner in a civil war: 1 to the prospect of life by remedies forbidden by therefore hung up the carrions as soon as I took God. When we consider the ignorance of one them: everybody knew where I passed, as the learned profession, and recollect that it had become trees were everywhere hung with my colors. At a proverb to say, "As ignorant as a priest," we Monsegur, I took eighty or a hundred soldiers, cannot much wonder at the darkness of the people; and went round the walls and made them leap and we cannot feel much surprised that they should down; they were dead before they came to the be led into excesses by the advice of a cruel bottom. At Pamiers, forty women were killed nobility and an ambitious priesthood. Great allowance must be made for the differences of the age from ours; and we must remember that until the works of John Locke, toleration, in our sense of the word, was never understood. at once, which made me very angry, as soldiers ought not to kill women; but several bad boys came in my way, who served to fill up the wells in the castle." A letter is still extant from Pope Pius IV. to this noble and well-beloved son of the Uniformity of opinion was the grand object; the church, congratulating him on the gifts of Heaven, Council of Trent met for the purpose of settling commending him for his virtuous and honorable what men ought to believe, with the full expec- deeds, and assuring him of the eternal favor of tation of being able to persuade them that it was God, whose cause he had so triumphantly detheir duty to do so, and a full determination to fended. Reprisals are the natural consequence of oppres- | my mother saw me, and told me to go to bed. As sion; and the Hugonots, though slow to take up arms, were well skilled in their use; and in one I made my courtesy, my sister took me by the arm, and stopping me began to weep, saying, Sister, do not go. This frightened me excessively, which single instance were equally cruel with their op- the queen perceived, and calling very angrily to ponents. The Baron D'Adrets was the only Protestant who imitated the barbarity of his enemies: after plundering several convents, and laying waste the country around, he took the tower of Maugiron; and, by way of amusement after dinner, he compelled the garrison to leap from the battlements. One of his victims ran forward three times to the fatal leap, but paused upon the brink. The baron reproached him with cowardice; but the man replied, "My lord, brave as you are, I will give you ten trials." For this answer the baron spared his life. With these characters and facts before us, we are led to the painful conclusion, that there was little religion on either side; but we cannot forget that we have no "acts and monuments" of the martyrs of France. The historians seem to have thought little of the feelings which prompted men to sacrifice their lives for conscience' sake; and we certainly miss honest John Fox and his writings: perhaps had such a man been found to record the sentiments and virtues of the Hugonot martyrs, they might have been considered equal to some of his English heroes : Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona was "Keep the ball rolling." The parliament was a mere court for the registry of royal edicts; and the only influence they ever exerted was to reject some of the proclamations in favor of toleration, which Charles IX. had been induced to grant. The interest of the reigns of Francis and Charles is fully sustained up to the final catastrophe of 1572. It is only fair to the author to allow the history to speak for itself, and we wish we had room to extract the whole chapter; our limits, however, will only admit of a short portion. Queen Margaret (the bride of Henry IV.) will supply a picture of what was passing in the queen's private circle, during this terrible evening. "I knew nothing of all this," says she; "I saw every one in agitation. The Hugonots in despair at the wound (Coligny had been wounded some days before;) the Guises, having been threatened that justice would be had for it, whispering in each other's ears. I was suspected by the Hugonots of being a Catholic, by the Catholics as being married to the King of Navarre; so that no one told me anything until the evening, when, being at the toilet of the queen my mother, and sitting near my sister of Lorraine, who I saw was very sorrowful, the queen my sister. forbade her to tell me anything. My sister said it was too shocking to send me to be sacrificed in that manner; for doubtless if anything were discovered, immediate revenge would be had upon me. The queen answered, unless it were the will of God, no harm could happen to me; but, be that as it might, I must go, lest they should suspect something. They continued to dispute, but I could not hear their words. At length she told me very roughly to go to bed, and my sister bursting into tears bade me good night, not daring to say more. As for me, I went away shivering and trembling, unable to imagine what was to be feared. As soon as I was in my closet, I began to pray God that he would be pleased to protect and guard me, not knowing from whom or against what. The king, my husband, who was already in bed, called to me; I came and found the bed surrounded by about thirty or forty Hugonot gentlemen, whom I scarcely knew, being so lately married. All night they did nothing but talk of the admiral's accident; and resolve that in the morning they would demand justice of the king on M. de Guise, and failing him, do it for themselves. I, who had my sister's tears still upon my heart, could not sleep, and so the night passed. At the point of day the king rose, saying he would go and play tennis till Charles awoke; resolving then to demand justice. He quitted the room, his gentlemen with him; I begged the nurse to shut the door, and fell asleep." It was midnight that Catherine, fearing the resolution of her son might still fail, came down to the king's apartment, to watch over him till the moment for execution should arrive. She found there the Duke d'Anjou, the Duke de Nevers, De Ritz, and Biraque, who were all uniting their efforts to encourage Charles and maintain him in his resolu tion; but their words were vain. As the moment approached, horror took possession of the king; cold damps stood upon his brow, and a troubled fever agitated his frame. The queen endeavored to arouse him by every means in her power, endeavoring, by arts she too well understood, to irritate once more his fiercer passions, and silence the remorseful and relenting feelings of nature-striving with her usual wicked sophistry to color crime by a pretence of justice and necessity. She asked him (says D'Aubigné) whether it were not best at once to tear corrupted members from the bosom of the Church, the blessed spouse of our Lord; and repeated, after a celebrated Italian divine, that abominable sentiment, so often and so easily perverted, "That in their case mercy was cruelty, and cruelty was mercy." She again represented the critical nature of his affairs, and how bitterly he would repent if he suffered the present opportunity to escape him; thus striving to stifle that cry of outraged conscience which, in spite of all her efforts, would make itself heard in the bosom of her wretched son. At last she succeeded in dragging the fatal order from his lips. The moment it was obtained she was impatient to begin. It wanted an hour and a half of day-break, when the appointed signal was to be given upon the tocsin of the Hall of Justice. But the interval appeared too long for her fears; and as the distance to the Palais de Justice was considerable, she commanded the tocsin of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, which is close upon the Louvre, to be sounded in its place, and the dreadful alarum to be given without loss of time. This order being issued, a pause of perfect silence ensued and then those three guilty creatures, the queen and her two miserable sons, crept to a small closet over the gate of the Louvre, and opening a window, looked uneasily out into the night. But all was silent as the grave. Suddenly a pistol shot was heard. "I know not from whence," says the Duke of Anjou, for it is his account which I am following,) " nor if it wounded any one; but this I know, that the shot struck us all three in such a manner that it paralyzed our sense and judgment. Seized at once with terror and apprehension at the idea of those great disorders about to be committed, we sent down a gentleman in much haste to tell the Duke of Guise to proceed no further against the admiral, which would have prevented all that followed. But the order came too late. Guise was already gone. It was still dark, for the morning had not yet dawned, when through the awful stillness of that fearful night the tocsin of St. Germain's was heard sounding. Through streets lighted by flambeaux, which now appeared in every window, and through crowds of people gathering on every side, the Dukes of Guise and Nevers, with the Chevalier d'Angoulême, and their suite, made their way to the hotel of the admiral, with whose murder the general slaughter was to begin." Coligny, reposing in peace on the good faith of his master, was quietly resting in his bed; and having dismissed Guerchi and Teligny, who lingered long after the rest of the Hugonot gentlemen had retired, was attended only by Cornaton and Labonne, two of his gentlemen, Yolet his squire, Mulin his religious minister, his German interpreter, and Ambrose Paré, who was still in the house. His ordinary domestic servants were, however, in waiting in the ante-chamber. Outside the street-door of his hotel, Cosseins, (his enemy, and a creature of Catherine, sent ostensiby for his protection,) with fifty arquebusiers, was posted, and within were five Swiss guards belonging to the King of Navarre. As soon as the Duke of Guise, followed by his company, appeared, Cosseins knocked at the outer door which opened into the hall where the Swiss were placed, and saying one was come from the king who wanted to speak to the admiral, demanded admittance. Some persons who were in waiting, upon this went up to Labonne who kept the keys, and who came down into the court, and hearing the voice of Cosseins, undid the lock immediately. But at the moment that the door opened the unfortunate gentleman fell covered with blood, poignarded by Cosseins, as he rushed the wall and engaged in prayer. Still unsuspicious of the real truth, and imagining the populace, headed by the Guises, were endeavoring to force the house, he relied upon Cosseins for protection. Merlin, who lay in the same chamber, had risen with him on the first alarm. Cornaton entering in the greatest terror, Coligny asked what all this noise was about? "My lord," said Cornaton, "it is God who calls you-the hall is carried; we have no means of resistance." The eyes of Coligny were suddenly opened, and he began to understand the treachery of the king; but the terrible conviction could not shake his composure; he preserved his usual calmness, and said, "I have long been prepared to die; but for you, all of you, save yourselves if it be possible; you can be of no assistance to me. I recommend my soul to the mercy of God." Upon this, those who were in the room, all except one faithful servant, Nicholas Muss, his German interpreter, ran up to the garrets, and finding a window in the roof, endeavored to escape over the tops of the neighboring houses; but they were fired at from below and the most part killed, Merlin and Cornaton with two others only surviving. In the mean time, Cosseins having broken the inner door, sent in some Swiss of the Duke of Anjou's guard (known by their uniformblack, white, and green;) these passed the Swiss upon the stairs without molesting them, but Cosseins rushing in after, armed in his cuirass, and with his naked sword in his hand, followed by his arquebusiers, massacred them all, and then hurrying up stairs forced open the door of the admiral's room. Besme, a page of the Duke of Guise, a man of Picardy, named Sarlaboux, and a few others, rushed in. They found Coligny seated in an arm chair, regarding them with the composed and resolute air of one who had nothing to fear. Besme rushed forward with his sword raised in his hand, crying out, "Are you the admiral?" "I am," replied Coligny, looking calmly at the sword. "Young man, you ought to respect my grey hairs and infirmities-yet you cannot shorten my life." For answer Besme drove his sword to the hilt in the admiral's bosom; then he struck him over the head and across the face the other assassins fell upon him, and covered with wounds, he soon lay mangled and dead at their feet. D'Aubigné adds, that at the first blow Coligny cried out, " If it had been but at the hands of a man of honor, and not from this varlet!" The above circumstances were related afterwards by Attin Sarkaboux, who has been mentioned as one of the murderers, but who was so struck with the intrepidity displayed by this great captain, that he could never afterwards speak of the scene but in followed by his arquebusiers. The Swiss guards in terms of admiration, saying, " he had never seen prepared to defend themselves; but when they saw the tumult headed by the very man who had stood guard before the door, they lost courage, and retreating behind another which led to the stairs, shut and bolted it, but the arquebusiers fired through it, and one of the Swiss guards fell. The noise a man meet death with such constancy and firmness." The Duke of Guise, and the rest who had penetrated into the court, stood under the window of the admiral's chamber, Guise crying out, "Besme, have you done?" "It is over," answered he from above; the Chevalier d'Angoulême called below awakened Cornaton, who springing up ran out, "Here is Guise will not believe it, unless he down to inquire the cause of this disturbance. He sees it with his own eyes. Throw him out of the found the hall filled with soldiers, with Cosseins crying out to open the inner door in the king's name. Seeing no means to escape, he resolved at least to defend the house as long as he could, and began barricading the door with boxes, benches, and anything that came to hand. This done, he ran up to the admiral. He found him already risen, and in his dressing gown, standing leaning against window." Then Besme and Sarlaboux, with some difficulty, lifted up the gashed and bleeding body, and flung it down; the face being so covered with blood that it could not be recognized. The Duke de Guise stood down, and wiping it with his handkerchief, this man (whom Hume has not hesitated to call as magnanimous as his father) cried out, "I know him;" and giving a kick to the poor dead |