Charles was in frightful agitation and stubbornly refused.  Finally, with an air of offended dignity, she bowed coldly and said to her son, “Sir, will you permit me to withdraw with my daughter from your kingdom?” The wretched Charles was conquered.  In a sort of insane fury he exclaimed, “Well, let them kill him, and all the rest of the Huguenots too.  See that not one remains to reproach me.”

This was more than she had hoped.  All was easy now.  So eager was she to give the order before a change of mood, that she flew herself to give the signal, fully two hours earlier than was expected.  At midnight the tocsin rang out upon the night, and the horror began.

Lulled to a feeling of security by artfully contrived circumstances, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, peacefully sleeping, were awakened to see each other hideously slaughtered.

The stars have looked down upon some terrible scenes in Paris; her stones are not unacquainted with the taste of human blood; but never had there been anything like this.  The carnage of battle is merciful compared with it.  Shrieking women and children, half-clothed, fleeing from knives already dripping with human blood; frantic mothers shielding the bodies of their children, and wives pleading for the lives of husbands; the living hiding beneath the bodies of the dead.

The cry that ascended to Heaven from Paris that night was the most awful and despairing in the world’s history.  It was centuries of cruelty crowded into a few hours.

The number slain can never be accurately stated, but it was thousands.  Human blood is intoxicating.  An orgy set in which laughed at orders to cease.  Seven days it continued, and then died out for lack of material.  The provinces had caught the contagion, and orders to slay were received and obeyed in all except two, the Governor of Bayonne, to his honor be it told, writing to the king in reply:  “Your Majesty has many faithful subjects in Bayonne, but not one executioner.”

And where was “his Majesty” while this work was being done?  How was it with Catharine?  We hear of no regrets, no misgivings; that she was calm, collected, suave, and unfathomable as ever; but that Charles, in a strange, half-frenzied state, was amusing himself by firing from the windows of the palace at the fleeing Huguenots.  Had he killed himself in remorse, would it not have been better, instead of lingering two wretched years, a prey to mental tortures and an inscrutable malady, before he died?

Europe was shocked.  Christendom averted her face in horror.  But at Madrid and Rome there was satisfaction.

Catharine and the Duke of Alva had done their work skilfully, but the result surprised and disappointed them.  Tens of thousands of Huguenots were slain, which was well; but many times that number remained, with spirit unbroken, which was not well.

They had been too merciful!  Why had Henry of Navarre been spared?  Had not Alva said, “Take the big fish, and let the small fry go.  One salmon is worth more than a thousand frogs.”