“My lord,” said Cornaton to Coligny, “it is God calling us.”  “I have long been ready to die,” said the admiral; “but you, my friends, save yourselves, if it is still possible.”  All ran up stairs and escaped, the majority by the roof; a German servant, Nicholas Muss, alone remained with the admiral, “as little concerned,” says Cornaton, “as if there were nothing going on around him.”  The door of his room was forced.  Two men, servants of the Guises, entered first.  One of them, Behme, attached to the Duke of Guise’s own person, came forward, saying, “Art thou not the admiral?” “Young man,” said Coligny, “thou comest against a wounded and an aged man.  Thou’lt not shorten my life by much.”  Behme plunged into his stomach a huge pointed boar-spear which he had in his hand, and then struck him on the head with it.  Coligny fell, saying, “If it were but a man!  But ’tis a horse-boy.”  Others came in and struck him in their turn.  “Behme!” shouted the Duke of Guise from the court-yard, “hast done?” “’Tis all over, my lord,” was the answer; and the murderers threw the body out of the window, where it stuck for an instant, either accidentally or voluntarily, and as if to defend a last remnant of life.  Then it fell.  The two great lords, who were waiting for it, turned over the corpse, wiped the blood off the face, and said, “Faith, ’tis he, sure enough.”

[Illustration:  Henry de Guise and the Corpse of Coligny——­369]

Some have said that Guise gave him a kick in the face.  A servant of the Duke of Nevers cut off the head, and took it to the queen-mother, the king, and the Duke of Anjou.  It was embalmed with care, to be sent, it is said, to Rome.  What is certain is that, a few days afterwards, Mandelot, governor of Lyons, wrote to the king, “I have received, sir, the letter your Majesty was pleased to write to me, whereby you tell me that you have been advertised that there is a man who has set out from over yonder with the head he took from the admiral after killing him, for to convey it to Rome, and to take care, when the said man arrives in this city, to have him arrested, and to take from him the said head.  Whereupon I incontinently gave such strict orders, that, if he presents himself, the command which it pleases your Majesty to lay upon me will be acted upon.  There hath not passed, for these last few days, by way of this city, any person going Romewards save a squire of the Duke of Guise’s, named Paule, the which had departed four hours previously on the same day on which I received the said letter from your Majesty.”

We do not find anywhere, in reference to this incident, any information going further than this reply of the governor of Lyons to Charles IX.  However it may be, the remains of Coligny’s body, after having been hung and exposed for some days on the gibbet of Montfaucon, were removed by Duke Francis de Montmorency, the admiral’s relative and friend, who had them transferred to Chantilly and interred in the chapel