tensity, that, on
the thirtieth of August, measures were adopted to prevent any wrong from
being done to foreign merchants sojourning in Paris, and especially to the
German, English, and Flemish students of the university.[1050]

[Sidenote: Miracle of the "Cimetiere des Innocents."]

The smile of Heaven, it was said by the Roman Catholic clergy, rested upon
the effort to extirpate heresy in France. They convinced the people of the
truth of their assertion by pointing to an unusual phenomenon which they
declared to be evidently miraculous. In the Cimetiere des Innocents and
before a small chapel of the Virgin Mary, there grew a white hawthorn,
which, according to some accounts, had for several years been to all
appearance dead. Great then was the surprise of those who, on the eventful
St. Bartholomew's Day, beheld the tree covered with a great profusion of
blossoms as fragrant as those flowers which the hawthorn usually puts
forth in May. It was true that no good reason could be assigned why the
wonder might not with greater propriety be explained, as the Protestants
afterward suggested, rather as a mark of Heaven's sympathy with oppressed
innocence. But no doubts entered the minds of the Parisian ecclesiastics.
They spread abroad the fame of the prodigy. They rang the church-bells in
token of joy, and invited the blood-stained populace to witness the sight,
and gain new courage in their murderous work. It may well be doubted
whether either the hawthorn or the virgin of the neighboring chapel
wrought the wonderful cures recorded by the curate of Meriot.[1051] But
certainly the reported intervention of Heaven setting its seal upon
treacherous assassination prolonged the slaughter of Huguenots. "It
seemed," says Claude Haton, reflecting the popular belief, "that God, by
this miracle, approved and accepted as well-pleasing to Him the Catholic
uprising and the death of His great enemy the admiral and his followers,
who for twelve years had been audaciously rending His seamless coat, which
is His true Church and His Bride."[1052] And so, what with the
encouragement afforded by the wonderful thorn-tree of the Cimetiere des
Innocents--what with the continuous fair weather, which was interpreted
after the same manner, the task of extirpating the heretical Huguenots was
prosecuted with a perseverance that never flagged. It is true that the
greater part of the work was done in the first three or four days; but it
was not terminate