every city and village of the kingdom. Beacon-fires, with their
lurid midnight glare, were to flash the tidings from mountain to
mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to steeple,
from city to hamlet, from valley to hill-side, till the whole
Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of
Protestantism from the land.

While Catharine and Charles were arranging all the details of this
deed of infamy, even to the very last moment they maintained with the
Protestants the appearance of the most cordial friendship. They
lavished caresses upon the Protestant generals and nobles. The very
day preceding the night when the massacre commenced, the king
entertained, at a sumptuous feast in the Louvre, many of the most
illustrious of the doomed guests. Many of the Protestant nobles were
that night, by the most pressing invitations, detained in the palace
to sleep. Charles appeared in a glow of amiable spirits, and amused
them, till a late hour, with his pleasantries.

Henry of Navarre, however, had his suspicions very strongly aroused.
Though he did not and could not imagine any thing so dreadful as a
general massacre, he clearly foresaw that preparations were making for
some very extraordinary event. The entire depravity of both Catharine
and Charles he fully understood. But he knew not where the blow would
fall, and he was extremely perplexed in deciding as to the course he
ought to pursue. The apartments assigned to him and his bride were in
the palace of the Louvre. It would be so manifestly for his worldly
interest for him to unite with the Catholic party, especially when he
should see the Protestant cause hopelessly ruined, that the mother and
the brother of his wife had hesitatingly concluded that it would be
safe to spare his life. Many of the most conspicuous members of the
court of Navarre lodged also in the capacious palace, in chambers
contiguous to those which were occupied by their sovereign.

Marguerite's oldest sister had married the Duke of Lorraine, and her
son, the Duke of Guise, an energetic, ambitious, unprincipled
profligate, was one of the most active agents in this conspiracy. His
illustrious rank, his near relationship with the king--rendering it
not improbable that he might yet inherit the throne--his restless
activity, and his implacable hatred of the Protestants, gave him the
most prominent position as the leader of the Catholic party. He had
often encountered