asten the coming of that
blessedness which I have long been expecting."[1097] Whereupon they killed
him, in the midst of his invocation of his God. Another Huguenot, De St.
Thomas, a schoolmaster, died uttering words as courageous as ever fell
from lips of early Christian martyrs: "Why! do you think that you move me
by your blasphemies and acts of cruelty? It is not within your power to
deprive me of the assurance of the grace of my God. Strike as much as you
please; I fear not your blows."[1098] Sometimes the dying men were allowed
a few moments to utter a final prayer; but, if their zeal led them too
far, their impatient murderers cut short their devotions with oaths and
curses, and exclaimed: "Here are people that take a great while to pray to
their God!"[1099] Of resistance there was little, so far were the
Huguenots from having collected arms and prepared for such a conspiracy as
was imputed to them. If a Huguenot teacher of fencing killed one or two of
his assailants, or if a few gentlemen at different places kept them at bay
awhile with stones or other missiles, this, so far from proving their evil
intentions, on the contrary, furnishes undeniable proof of the very
different results that might have ensued had their means of defence been
equal to their courage. For fifteen days after the principal massacre the
work went on more quietly, the dead bodies being still thrown into the
ditch--where wolves, which in the sixteenth century abounded in the valley
of the Loire, were permitted to feed upon them undisturbed--or into the
river, of whose fish, fattened upon this human carrion, the people feared
to eat.[1100]

[Sidenote: Massacre at Bourges.]

At Bourges the news of the massacre was received late on Tuesday.
Meantime, some of the more sagacious of the Huguenots (among others, the
celebrated Francis Hotman, at this time a professor of law in the
University of Bourges), alarmed by the wounding of Admiral Coligny, had
fled from the city. Even after the news came, the massacre was but
partial. Although the mayor, Jean Joupitre, had received sealed orders
(lettres de cachet) instructing him as to the part he was to take, the
municipal officers, knowing the ill-will the Guises had always borne to
the Huguenots, were in doubt how far the king countenanced the bloody
work. But the royal letter of the thirtieth of August, accompanying the
declaration of the twenty-eighth, to which reference was made above,[1101]
so far f