ve fully contented her. She was not seeking for revenge so much
as paving the way for her ambition. There were few Huguenots who were
apparently so powerful as to interfere with her projects. Coligny, their
acknowledged head; the Count of Montgomery, personally hated as the
occasion of the death of her husband, Henry the Second, in the ill-fated
tournament; the Vidame of Chartres; and La Rochefoucauld--these were
doubtless of the number. Would she have desired to include the King of
Navarre and the Prince of Conde? Not the former, on account of his recent
marriage with her daughter. Yet to whom the Bourbons were indebted for the
omission of their names from the proscriptive roll we cannot tell. After
the accession of Henry the Fourth, it became the interest of all the
families concerned to put the conduct of their ancestors in the most
favorable light. Thus, Jean de Tavannes states that his father saved the
life of the Bearnese in that infamous conclave; but so little did the
latter believe him, that, on the contrary, he persistently refused to
confer upon him the marshal's baton, which he would otherwise have
received, on the ground that Gaspard de Tavannes was an instigator of the
massacre.[968]

[Sidenote: Religious hatred.]

Thus much must be held to be clearly established: that fancied political
exigencies demanded the assassination of only very few persons; that
personal hatred, on the part of the principal or of the minor
conspirators, added many more; that a still greater number were murdered
in cold blood, simply that their spoils might enrich the assassins. What
part must be assigned to religious zeal?[969] To any true outgrowth of
religion, none at all; but much to the malice and the depraved moral
teachings of its professed representatives. The hatred of Protestantism,
engendered in the minds of the people by long years devoted to traducing
the character and designs of the reformers, now bore fruit after its own
kind, in revolting crimes of every sort; while the lesson, sedulously
inculcated by priests, bishops, and monks, that obstinate heretics might
righteously be, and ought to be exterminated from the face of the earth,
permitted many a Parisian burgess to commit acts from which any but the
most diabolic nature would otherwise have recoiled in horror. But of the
measure of the responsibility of the Roman pontiff and his clergy for this
stupendous crime, it will be necessary to speak in the sequel.

[Si