s to Almighty God for his happy deliverance
from his enemies, Charles, accompanied by his brothers, the Dukes of Anjou
and Alencon, by the King of Navarre, and by a numerous body of his
principal lords, proceeded to the parliament house, and there, in the
presence of all the chambers, held his "Lit de Justice."[1058] He opened
this extraordinary meeting by an address, in which he dilated upon the
intolerable insults he had, from his very childhood, experienced at the
hands of Coligny, and many other culprits, who had made religion a pretext
for rebellion. His attempts to secure peace by large concessions had
emboldened Coligny so far that he had at last ventured to conspire to kill
him, his mother, and his brothers, and even the King of Navarre, although
a Huguenot like himself; intending to place the Prince of Conde upon the
throne, and subsequently to put him also out of the way, and appropriate
the regal authority after the destruction of the entire royal family. In
order to ward off so horrible a blow, he had, he said, been compelled to
resort to extreme measures of rigor. He desired all men to know that the
steps taken on the preceding Sunday for the punishment of the guilty had
been in accordance with his orders. He is even reported to have gone
farther, and to have invoked the aid of parliament in condemning the
memory and confiscating the property of those against whom he had alleged
such abominable crimes.[1059]

[Sidenote: Servile reply of parliament.]

[Sidenote: Christopher de Thou.]

To this allocution the parliament replied with all servility. Christopher
de Thou, the first president, lauded the prudence of a monarch who had
known how to bear patiently repeated insults, and at last to crush a
conspiracy so dangerous to the quiet of the realm. And he quoted with
approval the infamous apothegm of Louis the Eleventh: "_Qui nescit
dissimulare, nescit regnare._" The solitary suggestion that breathed any
manly spirit was that of Pibrac, the "avocat-general," to the effect that
orders should be published to put an end to the work of murder and
robbery--a request which Charles readily granted.[1060] Never had the
supreme tribunal of justice abased itself more ignobly than when it
listened so complaisantly to the king, and approved without qualification
an organized massacre perpetrated unblushingly under its very eyes. As for
the distinguished man who lent himself to be the mouthpiece of adulation
worse than sla