or weeks the
inhabitants of Arles and other places carefully abstained from drinking
the water of the polluted stream.[1114]

[Sidenote: Responsibility of Mandelot.]

The part which Mandelot took in this awful tragedy has been very
differently estimated, but I am inclined to think that the governor is not
chargeable with any direct responsibility for the butchery in the prisons
of Lyons. Certainly this seems to be established by his letter to the
king, written in the morning of the day on which it occurred; for he would
scarcely have expressed his great desire and hope to be able to prevent
any outbreak, if he had planned, or even foreseen, the events of the
evening.[1115] The story must therefore be apocryphal, that Mandelot, in
commissioning one of the chief assassins to execute the bloody work,
blasphemously said: "I intrust the whole to you, and, as Jesus Christ said
to Saint Peter, whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven."[1116] It was, however, no conscientious scruple that deterred the
governor from actively taking part. Mandelot was scandalously anxious to
obtain his part of the plunder, and was not ashamed to appear as a
suppliant for the confiscated property of the Huguenots almost before
their bodies were cold.[1117] But he was unwilling, without the express
orders of his sovereign, written with his own hand, to commit an act
which, the more successful it might be, was the more certain to be
disavowed and punished. He was right: a subordinate could not be too
careful in dealing with so treacherous a court.

[Sidenote: The massacre at Rouen.]

Few cities were so ripe for the massacre of the Protestants as the capital
of Normandy. There the passions of the Roman Catholics, inflamed by the
civil wars, had not been suffered to cool. Even in the provincial
parliament the papists could hardly submit to receive into their
deliberations again the five or six Huguenot counsellors who had been
expelled or had fled at the outbreak of hostilities, but whom the Edict of
Pacification restored to their ancient functions and dignity; and the
secret registers, among other unfortunate scenes, chronicle particularly a
violent discussion, degenerating into angry altercation between President
Vialard and the Huguenot member Maynet.[1118] The bloody assault of the
populace of Rouen upon the reformed in March, 1571, mentioned in a
previous