welt upon the wrong done to Charles in distrusting
his sincerity, and deprecated a course that might naturally irritate him.
One Bouchavannes was noticed in the conference--a professed Protestant,
but suspiciously intimate with Catharine, Retz, and other avowed enemies
of the faith. He said nothing, but listened attentively. So soon as the
meeting was over, Bouchavannes went to the Louvre and related the
discussion to the queen mother.[974] The traitor's report, doubtless
grossly exaggerated, is supposed to have decided Catharine to prompt
action. It is certain, at least, that the calumnious perversion of the
speeches and resolutions of the Huguenot conference was employed to
inflame the passions of the mob, as well as to justify the atrocities of
the morrow in the eyes of the world.

[Sidenote: Orders issued to the prevot des marchands.]

It was now late in the evening of Saturday, the twenty-third of August.
Coligny had been writing to his friends throughout France, recommending
them to be quiet, and informing them of the investigations now in
progress. God and the king, he said, would do justice. His wounds were not
mortal, thank God. If his _arm_ was wounded, his _brain_ was yet
sound.[975] Meantime, the original framers of the murderous plot had
called in the Guises, who in reality had not left Paris.[976] It had been
arranged that the execution should be intrusted to them, in conjunction
with the Bastard of Angouleme, Charles's natural brother, and Marshal
Tavannes. And now at last we emerge from the mist that envelops many of
the preliminaries of the night of horrors. The records of the Hotel de
Ville contain the first documentary evidence of the coming massacre. There
is no longer any doubt, unfortunately, of Charles's approval and
complicity. "This day, the twenty-third day of August, very late in the
evening," Charles sends for Charron, "prevot des marchands," to come to
the Louvre. Here, in the presence of the queen mother, the Duke of Anjou
and other princes and lords, his Majesty "declares that he has received
intelligence that those of the new religion intend to make a rising by
conspiracy against himself and his state, and to disturb the peace of his
subjects and of his city of Paris; and that this very night some great
personages of the said new religion and rebels have conspired against him
and his said state, going to such lengths as to send his Majesty some
arrogant messages which sounded like menaces