art, and
also a carved chest) the life of the merchant was passed; there the
joyous suppers after the work of the day was over, there the secret
conferences on the political interests of the burghers and of royalty
took place. The formidable corporations of Paris were at that time able
to arm a hundred thousand men. Therefore the opinions of the merchants
were backed by their servants, their clerks, their apprentices, their
workmen. The burghers had a chief in the "provost of the merchants" who
commanded them, and in the Hotel de Ville, a palace where they possessed
the right to assemble. In the famous "burghers' parlor" their solemn
deliberations took place. Had it not been for the continual sacrifices
which by that time made war intolerable to the corporations, who were
weary of their losses and of the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who
became king, might never perhaps have entered Paris.

Every one can now picture to himself the appearance of this corner of
old Paris, where the bridge and quai still are, where the trees of the
quai aux Fleurs now stand, but where no trace remains of the period
of which we write except the tall and famous tower of the Palais de
Justice, from which the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew.
Strange circumstance! one of the houses standing at the foot of that
tower then surrounded by wooden shops, that, namely, of Lecamus, was
about to witness the birth of facts which were destined to prepare for
that night of massacre, which was, unhappily, more favorable than fatal
to Calvinism.

At the moment when our history begins, the audacity of the new religious
doctrines was putting all Paris in a ferment. A Scotchman named Stuart
had just assassinated President Minard, the member of the Parliament
to whom public opinion attributed the largest share in the execution of
Councillor Anne du Bourg; who was burned on the place de Greve after the
king's tailor--to whom Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers had caused the
torture of the "question" to be applied in their very presence. Paris
was so closely watched that the archers compelled all passers along
the street to pray before the shrines of the Madonna so as to discover
heretics by their unwillingness or even refusal to do an act contrary to
their beliefs.

The two archers who were stationed at the corner of the Lecamus house
had departed, and Cristophe, son of the furrier, vehemently suspected of
deserting Catholicism, was able to leave