company of peasants’ children, he thus acquired simple and natural manners, and accustomed himself to fatigues and dangers.  He was educated in the reformed doctrines, but was more distinguished as a boy for his chivalric graces, physical beauty, and manly sports than for seriousness of character or a religious life.  He grew up a Protestant, from education rather than conviction.  At twelve, in the year 1565, he was intrusted by his mother, the Queen of Navarre, to the care of his uncle, the Prince of Conde, and, on his death, to Admiral Coligny, the acknowledged leader of the Protestants.  He thus witnessed many bloody battles before he was old enough to be intrusted with command.  At eighteen he was affianced to Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles IX., in spite of differences of religion.

It was amid the nuptial festivities of the young King of Navarre,—­his mother had died the year before,—­when all the prominent leaders of the Protestants were enticed to Paris, that preparations were made for the blackest crime in the annals of civilized nations,—­even the treacherous and hideous massacre of St. Bartholomew, perpetrated by Charles IX., who was incited to it by his mother, the ever-infamous Catherine de Medicis, and the Duke of Guise.

The Protestants, under the Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny, had fought so bravely and so successfully in defence of their cause that all hope of subduing them in the field was given up.  The bloody battles of Montcontour, of St. Denis, and of Jarnac had proved how stubbornly the Huguenots would fight; while their possession of such strong fortresses as Montauban and La Rochelle, deemed impregnable, showed that they could not easily be subdued.  Although the Prince of Conde had been slain at the battle of Jarnac, this great misfortune to the Protestants was more than balanced by the assassination of the great Duke of Guise, the ablest general and leader of the Catholics.  So when all hope had vanished of exterminating the Huguenots in open warfare, a deceitful peace was made; and their leaders were decoyed to Paris, in order to accomplish, in one foul sweep, by wholesale murder, the diabolical design.

The Huguenot leaders were completely deceived.  Old Admiral Coligny, with his deeper insight, hesitated to put himself into the power of a bigoted and persecuting monarch; but Charles IX. pledged his word for his safety, and in an age when chivalry was not extinguished, his promise was accepted.  Who could believe that his word of honor would be broken, or that he, a king, could commit such an outrageous and unprecedented crime?  But what oath, what promise, what law can bind a man who is a slave of religious bigotry, when his church requires a bloody and a cruel act?  The end seemed to justify any means.  I would not fix the stain of that infamous crime exclusively on the Jesuits, or on the Pope, or on the councillors of the King, or on his mother.  I will not say that it was even exclusively a Church movement: