d be given to
him.[876] Such seem to have been the assurances given by Charles on this
celebrated occasion, vague and indefinite, but calculated to allay to a
certain extent the anxiety of the head of the papal church.[877] There is
good reason to believe that the king's intention of fulfilling them, not
to say his plan for doing so, was equally undefined; although, so far as
his own faith was concerned, he had no thought of abandoning the church of
his fathers. The expressions by means of which Charles is made to point
with unmistakable clearness to a contemplated massacre,[878] of which,
however the case may stand with respect to his mother, it is all but
certain that he had at this time no idea, can only be regarded as fabulous
additions of which the earliest disseminators of the story were altogether
ignorant. The fact that the cardinal legate's rejection of the ring was
publicly known[879] seems to be a sufficient proof that it was offered
simply as a pledge of the king's general fidelity to the Holy See, not of
his intention to violate his edict and murder his Protestant subjects. The
government made the attempt in like manner to quiet the people, whom even
the smallest amount of concession and favor to the Huguenots rendered
suspicious; and the words uttered for this purpose were often so
flattering to the Roman Catholics, that, in the light of subsequent
events, they seem to have a reference to acts of treachery to which they
were not intended to apply.

[Sidenote: Jeanne d'Albret becomes more favorable to her son's marriage.]

The doubt propounded by Jeanne d'Albret to the reformed ministers,
respecting the lawfulness of a mixed marriage, having been satisfactorily
answered, and the devout queen being convinced that the union of Henry and
Margaret would rather tend to advance the cause to which she subordinated
all her personal interests, than retard it by casting reproach upon it,
the project was more warmly entertained on both sides. Yet the subject was
not without serious difficulty. Of this the religious question was the
great cause. To the English ambassadors, Walsingham and Smith, Jeanne
declared (on the fourth of March, 1572) in her own forcible language,
"that now she had the wolf by the ears, for that, in concluding or not
concluding the marriage, she saw danger every way; and that no matter
(though she had dealt in matters of consequence) did so much trouble her
as this, for that she could not tell ho