the
faith.[1158] A few weeks later, the pontiff shocked even some devout Roman
Catholics by allowing Cardinal Lorraine and the French ambassador to
present to him Maurevel, the assassin who had fired the arquebuse shot at
Admiral Coligny.[1159]

[Sidenote: French boasts go for nothing.]

"The pontiff," says his countryman, the historian Adriani, "and all Italy
universally rejoiced greatly, and forgave the king and queen their
previous dissimulation."[1160] For the French at Rome now pretended that
the massacre had long been planned by their monarch, and that every favor
to the Huguenots for the past two years had been shown to them merely for
the purpose of lulling them into a false security. The Pope accepted the
plea without troubling himself much whether it were true or not, satisfied
as he was with the event. But not so the Spanish envoy at the Roman court,
Don Juan de Cuniga. "The French wish to give the impression," he wrote to
his master, "that the king meditated this blow from the time he made peace
with the Huguenots; and, in order that it may be believed that he was
capable of preparing it and concealing it until the proper time for the
execution, they attribute to him stratagems which do not seem allowable
even against heretics and rebels. I deem it certain that, if the shooting
of the arquebuse at the admiral was a thing projected a few days
beforehand, and authorized by the king, all the rest was inspired by
circumstances."[1161] Equally positive, though not at all doubtful
respecting the morality of the transaction, and more jubilant, was the
Nuncio Salviati, in Paris. While desiring that the cardinal secretary
"should kiss the feet of his Holiness in his name," and "rejoicing with
him in the bowels of his heart at the blessed and honorable commencement
of his pontificate,"[1162] while declaring that, despite his previous
belief that the court of France would not much longer tolerate the
admiral's arrogance, he would never have imagined the tenth part of what
he now saw with his own eyes, he also stated he could not bring himself to
believe that, had the admiral been killed by Maurevel's shot, so much
would have been done by a great deal.[1163] Now, however, "the queen
intended not only to revoke the Edict of Pacification, but by means of
justice to restore the ancient observance of the Catholic faith."

[Sidenote: Catharine writes to Philip, her son-in-law.]

There was another monarch whose joy was not