this castle of the Louvre,[1054] so as
afterward to take measures for allaying the commotion throughout the city.
At the present hour it has, thank God, subsided! It occurred through the
private quarrel which has long existed between these two houses. Always
foreseeing that some bad consequences would result from it, I have
heretofore done all that I could to appease it, as every one knows. There
is in this nothing leading to the rupture of the Edict of Pacification,
which, on the contrary, I intend to be maintained as much as ever."[1055]

In view of the undeniable fact that Charles affixed his signature to this
letter in the midst of a horrible massacre for which he himself had given
the signal, which he still directed, and concerning whose progress he
received hourly bulletins from the municipal authorities, it must be
admitted that the king showed himself no novice in the ignoble art of
shameless misrepresentation.

[Sidenote: Guise throws the responsibility on the king.]

Guise, on his part, was not less solicitous to relieve himself of
responsibility, and to lay the burden upon the king's shoulders. We have
seen that, at the very moment of Coligny's assassination, he began to
repeat the words: "It is the king's pleasure; it is his express command!"
as his warrant for the crime. As the massacre grew in extent he and his
associates became more reluctant to be held accountable for it,[1056] and
at last they forced Charles to acknowledge himself its sole author. The
queen mother and Anjou, it is said, were mainly instrumental in leading
the monarch to take this unexpected step. His original intention had been
to compel the Guises to leave the capital immediately after the death of
Coligny--a movement which would have given color to the theory of their
guilt. But it was not difficult for Catharine and Henry to convince him
that by so doing he would only render more irreconcilable the enmity
between the Guises and the Montmorencies, who plainly exhibited their
intention to exact vengeance for the death of their illustrious kinsman,
the admiral. In short, he would purchase brief respite from trouble at the
price of a fresh civil war, more cruel than any which had preceded.[1057]

[Sidenote: The king accepts it.]

[Sidenote: The "Lit de Justice."]

It was on Tuesday morning, the twenty-sixth of August, that the king
formally and publicly assumed the weighty responsibility. After hearing a
solemn mass, to render thank