as completely
passed into oblivion. It has been traced back to the name of the
_Eidgenossen_ or _confederates_, under which the party of freedom
figured in Geneva when the authority of the bishop and duke was
overthrown;[849] or to the _Roy Huguet_, or _Huguon_, a hobgoblin
supposed to haunt the vicinity of Tours, to whom the superstitious
attributed the nocturnal assemblies of the Protestants;[850] or to the
gate _du roy Huguon_ of the same city, near which those gatherings were
wont to be made.[851] Some of their enemies maintained the former
existence of a diminutive coin known as a _huguenot_, and asserted that
the appellation, as applied to the reformed, arose from their "not being
worth a _huguenot_" or farthing.[852] And some of their friends, with
equal confidence and no less improbability, declared that it was
invented because the adherents of the house of Guise secretly put
forward claims upon the crown of France in behalf of that house as
descended from _Charlemagne_, whereas the Protestants loyally upheld the
rights of the Valois sprung from _Hugh_ Capet.[853] In the diversity of
contradictory statements, we may perhaps be excused if we suspend our
judgment of their respective merits, and prefer to look upon this
partisan name as one with whose original import not a score of persons
in France besides its fortuitous inventor may have been acquainted, and
which may have had nothing to recommend it to those who so readily
adopted it, save novelty and the recognized need of some more convenient
name than "Lutherans," "Christaudins," or the awkward circumlocution,
"those of the religion." Be this as it may, not a week had passed after
the conspiracy of Amboise before the word was in everybody's mouth. Few
knew or cared whence it arose.[854]

[Sidenote: Its sudden rise.]

A powerful party, whatever name it might bear, had sprung up, as it
were, in a night. There was sober truth conveyed in the jesting letter
of some fugitives to the Cardinal of Lorraine. Twenty or thirty
Huguenots succeeded in breaking the bars of their prison at Blois, and,
letting themselves down by cords, escaped. Some others at Tours, a few
days later, were equally fortunate. Scarcely had the latter regained
their liberty when they wrote a letter to the prelate who was supposed
to take so deep an interest in their concerns, informing him that,
having heard of the escape of his prisoners at Blois, they had been so
grieved, that, for the love