death' has conquered 'Verily.'"[279] But
the strictness with which theft and profanity were visited in the Huguenot
camp produced but a slight impression, compared with that made by the
punishment of death inflicted by a stern judge at Orleans, just before the
proclamation of peace, on a man and woman found guilty of adultery. Almost
the entire court cried out against the unheard-of severity of the sentence
for a crime which had never before been punished at all. The greater part
of these advocates of facile morals had even the indiscretion to confess
that they would never consent to accept such people as the Huguenots for
their masters.[280]

[Sidenote: Admiral Coligny accused.]

[Sidenote: His defence espoused by Conde and the Montmorencies.]

Even after the publication of the Edict of Amboise, there was one matter
left unsettled that threatened to rekindle the flames of civil war. It
will be remembered that the murderer of the Duke of Guise, overcome by
terror in view of his fate had charged Gaspard de Coligny with having
instigated the perpetration of the foul crime; that, as soon as he heard
the accusation, the admiral had not only answered the allegations, article
by article, but had written, earnestly begging that Poltrot's execution
might be deferred until the return of peace should permit him to be
confronted with his accuser. This very reasonable demand, we have seen,
had been rejected, and the miserable assassin had been torn into pieces by
four horses, upon the Place de Greve, on the very day preceding that which
witnessed the signing of the Edict of Amboise. If, however, the queen
mother had hoped to diminish the difficulties of her position by taking
this course, she had greatly miscalculated. In spite of his protestations,
and of a second and more popular defence which he now made,[281] the
Guises persisted in believing, or in pretending to believe, Coligny to be
the prime cause of the murder of the head of their family. His very
frankness was perverted into a proof of his complicity. The admiral's
words, as an eminent historian of our own day observes, bear the seal of
sincerity, and we need go for the truth nowhere else than to his own
avowals.[282] But they did not satisfy his enemies. The danger of an open
rupture was imminent. Coligny was coming to court from his castle of
Chatillon-sur-Loing, with a strong escort of six hundred gentlemen; but so
inevitable did a bloody collision within the walls of