crowns to go and play
spy in the camp of the Duke of Guise, and, some days later, a hundred
crowns to buy a horse. It was thus that Poltrot was put in a position to
execute the design he had been so fond of proclaiming before he had any
communication with Coligny. As soon as, on the 18th of February, 1563,
in the outskirts of Orleans, he had, to use his own expression, done his
trick, he fled full gallop, so as not to bear the responsibility of it;
but, whether it were that he was troubled in his mind, or that he was ill
acquainted with the region, he wandered round and round the place where
he had shot the Duke of Guise, and was arrested on the 20th of February
by men sent in search of him. Being forthwith brought before the privy
council, in the presence of the queen-mother, and put to the torture, he
said that Admiral de Coligny, Theodore de Beze, La Rochefoucauld,
Soubise, and other Huguenot chiefs had incited him to murder the Duke of
Guise, persecutor of the faithful, "as a meritorious deed in the eyes of
God and men." Coligny repudiated this allegation point blank. Shrinking
from the very appearance of hypocrisy, he abstained from any regret at
the death of the Duke of Guise. "The greatest blessing," said he, "which
could come to this realm and to the church of God, especially to myself
and all my house;" and he referred to conversations he had held with the
Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duchess of Guise, and to a notice which he
had sent, a few days previously, to the Duke of Guise himself, "to take
care, for there was somebody under a bond to kill him." Lastly, he
demanded that, to set in a clear light "his integrity, innocence, and
good repute," Poltrot should be kept, until peace was made, in strict
confinement, so that the admiral himself and the murderer might be
confronted. It was not thought to be obligatory or possible to comply
with this desire; amongst the public there was a passionate outcry for
prompt chastisement. Poltrot, removed to Paris, put to the torture and
questioned by the commissioners of Parliament, at one time confirmed and
at another disavowed his original assertions. Coligny, he said, had not
suggested the project to him, but had cognizance of it, and had not
attempted to deter him. The decree sentenced Poltrot to the punishment
of regicides. He underwent it on the 18th of March, 1563, in the Place
de Greve, preserving to the very end that fierce energy of hatred and
vengeance