impress this view upon the minds of the monarchs to whom they were accredited.  It was certainly a very different instruction from that which they had at first received.  Their cue had originally been to claim a full meed of praise and thanksgiving in behalf of their sovereign for his meritorious exploit.  The salvos of artillery, the illuminations and rejoicings, the solemn processions and masses by which the auspicious event had been celebrated, mere yet fresh in the memory of men.  The ambassadors were sufficiently embarrassed by the distinct and determined approbation which they had recently expressed.  Although the King, by formal proclamation, had assumed the whole responsibility, as he had notoriously been one of the chief perpetrators of the deed, his agents were now to stultify themselves and their monarch by representing, as a deplorable act of frenzy, the massacre which they had already extolled to the echo as a skilfully executed and entirely commendable achievement.

To humble the power of Spain, to obtain the hand of Queen Elizabeth for the Duke d’Alencon, to establish an insidious kind of protectorate over the Protestant princes of Germany, to obtain the throne of Poland for the Duke of Anjou, and even to obtain the imperial crown for the house of Valois—­all these cherished projects seemed dashed to the ground by the Paris massacre and the abhorrence which it had created.  Charles and Catharine were not slow to discover the false position in which they had placed themselves, while the Spanish jocularity at the immense error committed by France was visible enough through the assumed mask of holy horror.

Philip and Alva listened with mischievous joy to the howl of execration which swept through Christendom upon every wind.  They rejoiced as heartily in the humiliation of the malefactors as they did in the perpetration of the crime.  “Your Majesty,” wrote Louis of Nassau, very bluntly, to King Charles, “sees how the Spaniard, your mortal enemy, feasts himself full with the desolation of your affairs; how he laughs, to-split his sides, at your misfortunes.  This massacre has enabled him to weaken your Majesty more than he could have done by a war of thirty years.”

Before the year had revolved, Charles had become thoroughly convinced of the fatal impression produced by the event.  Bitter and almost abject were his whinings at the Catholic King’s desertion of his cause.  “He knows well,” wrote Charles to Saint Goard, “that if he can terminate these troubles and leave me alone in the dance, he will have leisure and means to establish his authority, not only in the Netherlands but elsewhere; and that he will render himself more grand and formidable than he has ever been.  This is the return they render for the good received from me, which is such as every one knows.”