In the year following the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Anjou-afterwards Henry III.-was elected King of Poland. In the narrative which he is said to have given verbally to Miron, his physician, we are furnished with an account of the motives and causes of the transaction in which he bore so guilty a part. The reporter, Miron, states that when Henry III. was on his way to Poland, in the cities of the Low Countries, wherever a crowd was assembled, he was saluted with bitter execrations in German, French, and Latin, for his agency in the massacre; and that in apartments where he was entertained and lodged, he found paintings depicting scenes in that fearful tragedy which had been arranged beforehand to meet his eye. Hence, two days after his arrival in Cracow, he was kept awake in the night by the recollection of the terrible occurrences which had thus been brought to his mind. Restless and agitated, about three hours after midnight, he summoned Miron from an adjacent room to his bedside, and related to him there the story of the origin of the massacre. According to this statement of Henry III., Charles, in the period just before the Navarre marriage, was in frequent conference with Coligny; and after those long conferences, the king treated Anjou and his mother in a very frigid and even rough manner. On one occasion, as Anjou was entering the king's apartment, after one of these interviews, Charles looked at him askance in a fierce way, and laid his hand upon the hilt of his dagger, so that he was glad to escape precipitately from the king's presence. Convinced that Coligny was undermining the king's regard for them, the Queen Mother and Anjou resolved to destroy him; and for this end called in the aid of the Duchess of Nemoursthe widow of Guise, and an Italian by birth-whose vindictive hatred of the Huguenot leader made her a willing coadjutor. Maurevel, who had abundant cause to fear the Chatillons, was pitched upon to do the deed. When the attempt had failed, the king after dinner-he dined at eleven-went to visit the wounded Admiral. Catherine and Anjou took care to go with him. While they were in the Admiral's chamber, he signified his wish to speak with the king privately. Anjou and his mother retired to another part of the room. Alarmed at the way in which this private conference was prolonged, and

at the menacing demeanor of the throng of Huguenot gentlemen, who treated them with less than usual respect, Catherine stepped to the bedside, and, to the obvious disgust of the king, broke off the conversation-saying that Coligny must not be wearied, that there was danger of fever, and that a future time must be chosen for finishing their talk. Whatever may be false in this narrative of Henry III., or may be omitted from it, the main circumstances of the interview are correctly given. Coligny thought that the bullets might have been poisoned, and he wished to give his dying counsel to the sovereign. On the way back to the Louvre, Anjou proceeds to say, Catherine by her importunity wrung from the king the avowal that the Admiral had warned him of the fatal consequences that would follow from allowing the management of public affairs to remain in her hands, and had advised him to hold her in suspicion, and to guard against her. This the king uttered with extreme passion, implying that he approved of Coligny's advice.

There was good ground for the consternation of the Queen Mother and of Anjou. A crisis had come for which they were not prepared. The wrath of the Huguenots was ready to burst forth in an armed attack upon the opposite faction. They were restrained only by the king; and even he was resolved to punish to the full the assailants of Coligny. If the Guises fell, the ascendency of the Huguenot chief, who would recover from his wounds, was assured. But the punishment which the king threatened might fall on Anjou, also, if not on Catherine herself. Nothing was left to her but to make another desperate effort, with the aid of counsellors as unprincipled as herself, to win back the king, resume the control over him which she had exercised from his childhood, and to enlist him in the work of destroying the Admiral and of breaking down the Huguenots' power of resistance. After noon on Saturday, she collected about her, in anxious conclave in the Tuileries, besides Anjou, the Count de Retz, the Chancellor Birogne, the Marshal de Tavannes, and the Duke de Nevers; three of whom were Italians like herself, with no scruples about assassinating an enemy, and with whom deceit and mystery lent an added fascination to crime. With these men, the Queen Mother repaired to the Louvre, to the cabinet of her son. There she made, with all

her energy and skill, her last and successful onset upon him. She avowed her own agency, and that of Anjou, in the attempt upon Coligny. But first she declared to him that the Hugue nots were everywhere arming to make themselves masters of the government; that the Admiral was to furnish 6,000 cavalry and 10,000 Swiss; that the Catholics in turn had lost all patience, and would instantly combine in a league to supplant him and seize on power; that there was no deliverance but in the death of Coligny, without whom the Huguenots would be left destitute of a leader. She reminded Charles of the insurrection when, at Meaux, they had nearly got possession of his person-a recollection that always excited his anger. When she saw that he did not yield; that he could not bring himself to give up Coligny and his friends-La Rochefoucauld, Teligni, and others; she begged- almost breathless, in her feigned despair that she and Anjou might have leave to withdraw from the approaching ruin-to retire from the court. To retire, as he well understood, meant to join themselves to the Catholic faction, soon to be in arms against him. At last she taunted him with fear of the Huguenots. Then he gave up; and in the fury of his vexation, wild with excitement, bade them kill not the Admiral alone, but all the Huguenots in France, that none might be left to reproach him. Such is the statement of Henry, who thus attributes the general massacre to the suggestion of the king. But Tavannes-or the son in the memoirs of his father-relates that the recommendation of the Council was to slay all the Huguenot leaders: he asserts that Navarre and Condé were spared by his own intercession. Catherine must have foreseen that the murder of Coligny, which could only be effected by open violence, would lead to a general slaughter, or to a bloody encounter between the forces of the two parties, resulting in a great loss of life. If she did not first recommend the general massacre, she consented to the plot, and joined in the execution of it.

The plan being formed, the requisite orders were promptly given. Guise took it in hand to destroy the Admiral. Chanon, the Provost of Merchants, and with him Marcel his predecessor, on whose influence and cruel disposition more reliance was placed, were summoned, and commissioned to shut the

gates of the city so that none could go out or come in, to arm the people, and have them in readiness in their proper wards. The organized soldiery were conveniently disposed under their commanders. A conspiracy and threatened rising of the Huguenots were the pretext for these arrangements; but the soldiers and the leaders of the mob needed no such inducement to reconcile them to the task of putting to death the heretics. As the dawn approached, Guise, with the bastard Angouleme, a son of Henry II., moved with a strong force silently through the streets to the lodgings of the Admiral, where the King's guards, who had been stationed there for his protection, were ready to side with the assassins. Coligny heard the tumult; divined its nature; calmly commended his soul to Christ; told his friends that he was ready to die; bade them escape, and was pierced with the swords of the hired murderers who flung his body from the window upon the pavement, that Guise might be satisfied that the work was completely done, and trample on the lifeless hero whom he had hated. Guise had ordered that every true Catholic should tie a white band upon his arm, and fasten a white cross to his hat. A distinguished painter, Millais, has depicted, in "The Huguenot Lover," a scene that might naturally have occurred. A maiden, in whose countenance tenderness is mingled with terror, is gazing up into the face of her lover, about whose arm she is trying to bind a white scarf-which he gently but firmly resists. The houses of the Huguenots were registered; there was no difficulty in finding the victims.

At early dawn the great bell of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois tolled out the signal, and the slaughter began. Even the hardhearted Marshal Tavannes, who superintended the soldiery, says: "Blood and death fill the streets with such horror that even their majesties, who were the authors of it, within the Louvre cannot avoid fear; all the Huguenots are indiscriminately slain, making no defence;" "many women and children are slain by the furious populace; two thousand are massacred." Catherine de Medici and her two sons had come to the front of the Louvre "to see the execution commence." This same Tavannes, with savage ferocity, cried to his men: "Kill, kill! bleeding is as good in August as in May!" The Protes

her energy and skill, her last and successful onset upon him. She avowed her own agency, and that of Anjou, in the attempt upon Coligny. But first she declared to him that the Hugue nots were everywhere arming to make themselves masters of the government; that the Admiral was to furnish 6,000 cavalry and 10,000 Swiss; that the Catholics in turn had lost all patience, and would instantly combine in a league to supplant him and seize on power; that there was no deliverance but in the death of Coligny, without whom the Huguenots would be left destitute of a leader. She reminded Charles of the insurrection when, at Meaux, they had nearly got possession of his person-a recollection that always excited his anger. When she saw that he did not yield; that he could not bring himself to give up Coligny and his friends-La Rochefoucauld, Teligni, and others; she begged-almost breathless, in her feigned despair-that she and Anjou might have leave to withdraw from the approaching ruin-to retire from the court. To retire, as he well understood, meant to join themselves to the Catholic faction, soon to be in arms against him. At last she taunted him with fear of the Huguenots. Then he gave up; and in the fury of his vexation, wild with excitement, bade them kill not the Admiral alone, but all the Huguenots in France, that none might be left to reproach him. Such is the statement of Henry, who thus attributes the general massacre to the suggestion of the king. But Tavannes-or the son in the memoirs of his father-relates that the recommendation of the Council was to slay all the Huguenot leaders: he asserts that Navarre and Condé were spared by his own intercession. Catherine must have foreseen that the murder of Coligny, which could only be effected by open violence, would lead to a general slaughter, or to a bloody encounter between the forces of the two parties, resulting in a great loss of life. If she did not first recommend the general massacre, she consented to the plot, and joined in the execution of it.

The plan being formed, the requisite orders were promptly given. Guise took it in hand to destroy the Admiral. Chanon, the Provost of Merchants, and with him Marcel his predecessor, on whose influence and cruel disposition more reliance was placed, were summoned, and commissioned to shut the