year 1574, is
still more pitiful. His countenance had become sad and forbidding. When
obliged to give audience to the representatives of foreign powers, as well
as in his ordinary interviews, he avoided the glance of those who
addressed him. He bent his head toward the ground and shut his eyes. At
short intervals he would open them with a start, and in a moment, as
though the effort caused him pain, he would close them again with no less
suddenness. "It is feared," adds the writer, "that the spirit of vengeance
has taken possession of him; formerly he was only severe, now his friends
dread lest he will become cruel." He must at all hazards find hard work to
do. He was on horseback for twelve or fourteen consecutive hours, and
pursued the same deer for two or three days, stopping only to take
nourishment, or snatch a little rest at night. His hands were scarred and
callous. When in the palace, his passion for violent exercise drove him to
the forge, where for three or four hours he would work without
intermission, with a ponderous hammer fashioning a cuirass or some other
piece of armor, and exhibiting more pride in being able to tire out his
gentle competitors, than in more royal accomplishments.[1230] We have no
means of tracing accurately the influence of the massacre upon others. The
Abbe Brantome, however, early pointed out the remarkable fact that of
those who took a principal part in the work of murder and rapine many soon
after met with violent deaths, either at the siege of La Rochelle or in
the ensuing wars, and that the riches they had so iniquitously accumulated
profited them little.[1231]

[Sidenote: How far was the Roman Church responsible?]

Before dismissing the consideration of the stupendous crime for which
Divine vengeance--to use the words of Sully--"made France atone by
twenty-six consecutive years of disaster, carnage, and horror,"[1232] it
is at once interesting and important to glance at a historical question
which still agitates the world, and for a correct and impartial solution
of which we are, perhaps, more favorably situated than were even the
contemporaries of the event. I allude to the inquiry respecting the extent
to which the Roman Church, and the Pope in particular, must be held
responsible for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day.

So far as Queen Catharine was concerned (and the same is true of some of
her advisers), it is admitted by all that no zeal for religion controlled
her co