especially to myself and all my house;” and he referred to conversations he had held with the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duchess of Guise, and to a notice which he had sent, a few days previously, to the Duke of Guise himself, “to take care, for there was somebody under a bond to kill him.”  Lastly, he demanded that, to set in a clear light “his integrity, innocence, and good repute,” Poltrot should be kept, until peace was made, in strict confinement, so that the admiral himself and the murderer might be confronted.  It was not thought to be obligatory or possible to comply with this desire; amongst the public there was a passionate outcry for prompt chastisement.  Poltrot, removed to Paris, put to the torture and questioned by the commissioners of Parliament, at one time confirmed and at another disavowed his original assertions.  Coligny, he said, had not suggested the project to him, but had cognizance of it, and had not attempted to deter him.  The decree sentenced Poltrot to the punishment of regicides.  He underwent it on the 18th of March, 1563, in the Place de Greve, preserving to the very end that fierce energy of hatred and vengeance which had prompted his deed.  He was heard saying to himself in the midst of his torments, and as if to comfort himself, “For all that, he is dead and gone,—­the persecutor of the faithful,—­and he will not come back again.”  The angry populace insulted him with yells; Poltrot added, “If the persecution does not cease, vengeance will fall upon this city, and the avengers are already at hand.”

Catherine de’ Medici, well pleased, perhaps, that there was now a question personally embarrassing for the admiral and as yet in abeyance, had her mind entirely occupied apparently with the additional weakness and difficulty resulting to the position of the crown and the Catholic party from the death of the Duke of Guise; she considered peace necessary; and, for reasons of a different nature, Chancellor de l’Hospital was of the same opinion:  he drew attention to “scruples of conscience, the perils of foreign influence, and the impossibility of curing by an application of brute force a malady concealed in the very bowels and brains of the people.”  Negotiations were entered into with the two captive generals, the Prince of Conde and the Constable de Montmorency; they assented to that policy; and, on the 19th of March, peace was concluded at Amboise in the form of an edict which granted to the Protestants the concessions recognized as indispensable by the crown itself, and regulated the relations of the two creeds, pending “the remedy of time, the decisions of a holy council, and the king’s majority.”  Liberty of conscience and the practice of the religion “called Reformed” were recognized “for all barons and lords high-justiciary, in their houses, with their families and dependants; for nobles having fiefs without vassals and living on the king’s lands, but for them and their families personally.”  The burgesses were treated less favorably; the Reformed worship was maintained in the towns in which it had been practised up to the 7th of March in the current year; but, beyond that and noblemen’s mansions, this worship might not be celebrated save in the faubourgs of one single town in every bailiwick or seneschalty.  Paris and its district were to remain exempt from any exercise of the said “Reformed religion.”