."[997]

Such was the Christian hero whom his enemies represented as breathing out
menaces upon the bed on which Maurevel's arquebuse had laid him, and as
exclaiming: "If my arm is wounded, my head is not. If I have to lose my
arm, I shall get the head of those who are the cause of it. They intended
to kill me; I shall anticipate them." Such was the disinterested patriot
whom, in the infatuation of their lying fabrications, the murderers of
Paris, their hands still reeking with the blood of thousands of women and
children incontestably innocent of any crime laid to the charge of their
husbands or fathers, pictured as plotting the wholesale assassination of
the royal family--even to the very Henry of Navarre whose wedding he had
come to honor by his presence--that he might place upon the throne of
France that stubborn heretic, the Prince of Conde![998]

[Sidenote: Murder of Huguenot nobles in the Louvre.]

While the murder of Coligny was in course of execution, or but shortly
after, a tragedy not less atrocious was enacted in the royal palace
itself. A number of Huguenot gentlemen of the highest distinction were
lodged in the Louvre. Charles, after the admiral's wound, had suggested to
the King of Navarre that he would do well to invite some of his friends to
act as a guard against any attack that might be made upon him by the Duke
of Guise, whom he characterized as a "mauvois garcon."[999] Late on
Saturday night, as Margaret of Valois informs us in her Memoirs, and long
after she and her husband had retired, these Huguenot lords, gathered
around Henry of Navarre's bed to the number of thirty, had discussed the
occurrences of the last two eventful days, and declared their purpose to
go to the king on the morrow and demand the punishment of the Guises.
Margaret herself had been purposely kept in ignorance of the plan for the
extirpation of the Protestants. For, if the Huguenots suspected her,
because she was a Roman Catholic, the papists suspected her equally
because she had married a Protestant. On parting with her mother for the
night, her elder sister Claude, Duchess of Lorraine, who happened to be on
a visit to the French court, had vainly attempted to detain Margaret,
expressing with tears the apprehension that some evil would befall her.
But Catharine had peremptorily sent her to bed, assuring her with words
which, seen in the light of subsequent revelations, approach the climax of
profanity: "That, if God pleased,