nch affairs, and regarded this merry-making
as ill-timed--pursued their uninterrupted course through Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday of that eventful week. But the description of most
of the elaborate pageants would contribute little to the value of our
conceptions of the character of the age. An exception may perhaps be made
in favor of an ingenious tournament that took place on Wednesday in the
Hotel Bourbon. Here the Isles of the Blessed, the Elysian Fields, and
Tartarus were represented by means of costly mechanisms. Charles and his
brothers figured as knights defending Paradise, which Navarre and others,
dressed as knights-errant, endeavored to enter by force of arms, but were
repulsed and thrust into Tartarus. After some time the defeated champions
were rescued from their perilous situation by the compassion of their
victors, and the performance terminated in a startling, but harmless
display of fireworks.[933] As the assailants were mostly Protestants, the
defenders Roman Catholics, it was not strange that a sinister
interpretation was soon put upon the strange plot; but, unless we are to
suppose the authors of the massacre, whose success depended upon the
surprise of the victims, so infatuated as to wish to forewarn them of
their fate, it is scarcely credible that they intended to prefigure the
ruin of the reformed faith in France.

[Sidenote: Huguenot grievances to be redressed.]

The time that had been allotted to pleasure was fast passing. The king was
soon to meet Coligny, according to his promise, for the transaction of
important business relating both to the internal and to the foreign
affairs of France. There were religious grievances to be redressed. The
admiral was particularly anxious to bring to the king's notice the
flagrant outrage recently perpetrated in Troyes, where a fanatical Roman
Catholic populace, indignant that the Huguenots, through the kindness of
Marie de Cleves, the betrothed of the Prince of Conde,[934] had been
permitted to hold their worship so near the city as her castle of
Isle-au-Mont, scarcely three leagues distant,[935] had met the Protestants
on their return from service with aggravated insult, and had killed in the
arms of its nurse an infant that had just been baptized according to the
reformed rites.[936] Catharine and her son Anjou saw with consternation
that the impression made by the "tears of Montpipeau" was already in a
great degree obliterated, and feared the complete