atageme est cy apres mis en Francois avec un avertissement au lecteur.
1574. Orig. ed., p. 22.

[928] Memoires de l'estat de France sous Charles IX. (Cimber et Danjou,
vii. 78.)

[929] "Avec certain formulaire que les uns et les autres n'improuvoyent
point." Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, vii. 79.

[930] As De Thou here speaks as an eye-witness of the marriage, I follow
his description very closely. Histoire univ., iv. (liv. lii.) 469, 470.
Agrippa d'Aubigne was not in Paris (Memoires, edit. Pantheon, p. 478), and
his account is meagre and deficient in originality. Hist. univ., ii. 12
(liv. i., c. 3). It is quite in keeping with the brave Gascon's character,
that, having come to Paris some days before, in order to obtain a
commission to command a company of soldiers which he had raised for the
war in Flanders, he had been obliged to leave almost instantly upon his
arrival, because he had acted as the second of a friend in a duel, and
wounded in the face an archer who endeavored to arrest him. Tavannes makes
Coligny suggest the removal of the ensigns taken from the Protestants as
"marques de troubles," and playfully claim for himself the 50,000 crowns
promised to any one who should bring the admiral's head. Memoires, ed.
Petitot, iii. 293.

[931] Memoires de l'Etat, _ubi supra_, pp. 79, 80; De Thou, _ubi supra_. I
have not deemed it out of place to describe some of the diversions with
which the French court occupied itself on the eve of the massacre. The
connection between reckless merriment and cold-blooded cruelty is often
startlingly close. Besides this, the finances of the country were so
hopelessly involved, as the consequence of the late civil wars, that this
lavish expenditure was particularly ill-timed. If old Gaspard de Tavannes
was as blunt as his son represents him to have been, he gave Charles some
good, but, like most good, unheeded advice. "Sire," said he, a propos of
the extravagance of the court at Guise's marriage in 1570, "you should
make a feast, and instead of the singers who are brought in artificial
clouds, you should bring those who would tell you this truth: 'You are
dolts! You spend your money in festivals, in pomps and masks, and do not
pay your men-at-arms nor your soldiers; foreigners will beat you!'"
Memoires, ed. Petitot, iii. 183.

[932] I had translated this letter from the copy given by the Memoires de
l'estat de France (_apud_ Archives curieuses, vii. 80, 81), which agrees
substantia