red indiscriminately both sexes and every age. The streets
resounded with the shouts of the assassins and the shrieks of their
victims. Cries of "Kill! kill! more blood!" rent the air. The bodies
of the slain were thrown out of the windows into the streets, and the
pavements of the city were clotted with human gore.

Charles, who was overwhelmed with such compunctions of conscience when
he heard the first shot, and beheld from his window the commencement
of the butchery, soon recovered from his momentary wavering, and,
conscious that it was too late to draw back, with fiendlike eagerness
engaged himself in the work of death. The monarch, when a boy, had
been noted for his sanguinary spirit, delighting with his own hand to
perform the revolting acts of the slaughter-house. Perfect fury seemed
now to take possession of him. His cheeks were flushed, his lips
compressed, his eyes glared with frenzy. Bending eagerly from his
window, he shouted words of encouragement to the assassins. Grasping a
gun, in the handling of which he had become very skillful from long
practice in the chase, he watched, like a sportsman, for his prey; and
when he saw an unfortunate Protestant, wounded and bleeding, flying
from his pursuers, he would take deliberate aim from the window of his
palace, and shout with exultation as he saw him fall, pierced by his
bullet. A crowd of fugitives rushed into the court-yard of the Louvre
to throw themselves upon the protection of the king. Charles sent his
own body-guard into the yard, with guns and daggers, to butcher them
all, and the pavements of the palace-yard were drenched with their
blood.

[Illustration: THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.]

Just before the carnage commenced, Marguerite, weary with excitement
and the agitating conversation to which she had so long been
listening, retired to her private apartment for sleep. She had hardly
closed her eyes when the fearful outcries of the pursuers and the
pursued filled the palace. She sprang up in her bed, and heard some
one struggling at the door, and shrieking "Navarre! Navarre!" In a
paroxysm of terror, she ordered an attendant to open the door. One
of her husband's retinue instantly rushed in, covered with wounds and
blood, pursued by four soldiers of her brother's guard. The captain of
the guard entered at the same moment, and, at the earnest entreaty of
the princess, spared her the anguish of seeing the friend of her
husband murdered before her ey