in the king’s presence, rebuked them strongly, and threatened them that, if they did not make themselves busy, the king would have them hanged.  The poor devils, unable to do aught else, thereupon answered, ’Ha! is that the way you take it, sir, and you, monsieur?  We swear to you that you shall hear news thereof, for we will ply our hands so well right and left that the memory shall abide forever of a right well kept St. Bartholomew.’” “Wherein they did not fail,” continues Brantome, “but they did not like it at first.”  According to other reports, the first opposition of the provost of tradesmen, Le Charron, was not without effect; it was not till the next day that he let the orders he had received take their course; and it was necessary to apply to his predecessor in his office, the ex-provost Marcel, a creature of the queen-mother’s, to set in motion the turbulent and the fanatical amongst the populace, “which it never does to ‘blood,’ for it is afterwards more savage than is desirable.”  Once let loose upon the St. Bartholomew, the Parisian populace was eager indeed, but not alone in its eagerness, for the work of massacre; the gentlemen of the court took part in it passionately, from a spirit of vengeance, from religious hatred, from the effect of smelling blood, from covetousness at the prospect of confiscations at hand.  Teligny, the admiral’s son-in-law, had taken refuge on a roof; the Duke of Anjou’s guards make him a mark for their arquebuses.  La Rochefoucauld, with whom the king had been laughing and joking up to eleven o’clock the evening before, heard a knocking at his door, in the king’s name; it is opened; enter six men in masks and poniard him.  The new Queen of Navarre, Marguerite de Valois, had gone to bed by express order of her mother Catherine.  “Just as I was asleep,” says she, “behold a man knocking with feet and hands at the door and shouting, Navarre!  Navarre!  My nurse, thinking it was the king my husband, runs quickly to the door and opens it.  It was a gentleman named M. de Leran, who had a sword-cut on the elbow, a gash from a halberd on the arm, and was still pursued by four archers, who all came after him into my bedroom.  He, wishing to save himself, threw himself on to my bed; as for me, feeling this man who had hold of me, I threw myself out of bed towards the wall, and he after me, still holding me round the body.  I did not know this man, and I could not tell whether he had come thither to offer me violence, or whether the archers were after him in particular, or after me.  We both screamed, and each of us was as much frightened as the other.  At last it pleased God that M. de Nanqay, captain of the guards, came in, who, finding me in this plight, though he felt compassion, could not help laughing; and, flying into a great rage with the archers for this indiscretion, he made them begone, and gave me the life of that poor man who had hold of me, whom I had put to bed and attended to in my closet, until he was well.”