and disastrous. The change was startling even to those who were its chief
cause: from a gentle boy he had become transformed into a morose and cruel
man. "The king is grown now so bloody-minded," writes one who enjoyed good
opportunities of observing him, "as they that advised him thereto do
repent the same, and do fear that the old saying will prove true," "_Malum
consilium consultori pessimum_."[1226] The story of the frenzy of Charles
who, on one occasion, seemed to be resolved to take the lives of Navarre
and Conde, unless they should instantly recant, and was only prevented by
the entreaties of his young wife, may be exaggerated.[1227] But certain it
is that the unhappy king was the victim of haunting memories of the past,
which, while continually robbing him of peace of mind, sometimes drove him
to the borders of madness. Agrippa d'Aubigne tells us, on the often
repeated testimony of Henry of Navarre, that one night, a week after the
massacre, Charles leaped up in affright from his bed, and summoned his
gentlemen of the bedchamber, as well as his brother-in-law, to listen to a
confused sound of cries of distress and lamentations, similar to that
which he had heard on the eventful night of the butchery. So convinced was
he that his ears had not deceived him, that he gave orders that the new
attack which he fancied to be made upon the partisans of Montmorency
should at once be repressed by his guards. It was not until the soldiers
returned with the assurance that everything was quiet throughout the city,
that he consented to retire to his rest again. For an entire week the
delusive cries seemed to return at the self-same hour.[1228] These
fancies--the creations of his fevered brain--may soon have left him, not
to return until the general closing in at the death-bed. But there were
marks of the violence of the passions of which he was the victim in his
altered mien and deportment. Even before the event that has fixed upon him
an infamous notoriety, he acted at times like a madman in the indulgence
of his whims and coarse tastes. Sir Thomas Smith, five months before the
fatal St. Bartholomew's Day, wrote of "his inordinate hunting, so early in
the morning and so late at night, without sparing frost, snow or rain, and
in so desperate doings as makes her (his mother) and them that love him to
be often in great fear."[1229] But now the picture, as faithfully drawn by
the friendly hand of the Venetian ambassador, early in the