scanned him, himself and his movements, and his speech and his looks, which had made us laugh and afforded us good pastime, we considered him too hare-brained and too much of a wind-bag to deal the blow well.”  They then applied to an officer “of practice and experience in murder,” Charles de Louviers, Sieur de Maurevert, who was called the king’s slaughterman (le tueur du roi), because he had already rendered such a service, and they agreed with him as to all the circumstances of place, time, and procedure most likely to secure the success of the deed, whilst giving the murderer chances of escape.

In such situations there is scarcely any project the secret of which is so well kept that there does not get abroad some rumor to warn an observant mind; and when it is the fate of a religious or a popular hero that is in question, there is never any want of devoted friends or servants about him, ready to take alarm for him.  When Coligny mounted his horse to go from Chatillon to Paris, a poor countrywoman on his estates threw herself before him, sobbing, “Ah! sir, ah! our good master, you are going to destruction; I shall never see you again if once you go to Paris; you will die there, you and all those who go with-you.”  At Paris, on the approach of the St. Bartholomew, the admiral heard that some of his gentlemen were going away.  “They treat you too well here,” said one of them, Langoiran, to him; “better to be saved with the fools than lost for the sake of being thought over-wise.”  “The admiral was beset by letters which reminded him of the queen-mother’s crooked ways, and the detestable education of the king, trained to every sort of violence and horrible sin; his Bible is Macchiavelli; he has been prepared by the blood of beasts for the shedding of human blood; he has been persuaded that a prince is not bound to observe an edict extorted by his subjects.”  To all these warnings Coligny replied at one time by affirming the king’s good faith, and at another by saying, “I would rather be dragged dead through the muck-heaps of Paris than go back to civil war.”  This great soul had his seasons, not of doubt as to his faith or discouragement as to his cause, but of profound sorrow at the atrocious or shameful spectacles and the public or private woes which had to be gone through.

Charles IX. himself felt some disquietude as to the meeting of the Guises and Coligny at his court.  The Guises had quitted it before the 18th of August, the day fixed for the marriage of King Henry of Navarre with Marguerite de Valois.  When the marriage was over, they were to return, and they did.  At the moment of their returning, the king said to Coligny, with demonstrations of the most sincere friendship, “You know, my dear father, the promise you made me not to insult any of the Guises as long as you remained at court.  On their side, they have given me their word that they will have for you, and all the gentry of your following, the consideration you