to be so good a mother, and so devoted to the
welfare of your kingdom, that when she knows of it she will do nothing to
spoil it.' 'You are mistaken, my dear father,' said the king; 'leave it
to me only; I see quite well that you do not know my mother; she is the
greatest meddler in all the world.'" Another time, when he was speaking
likewise to Teligny, Coligny's son-in-law, about this enterprise against
Flanders, the king said, "Wouldst have me speak to thee freely, Teligny?
I distrust all these gentry; I am suspicious of Tavannes' ambition;
Vieilleville loves nothing but good wine; Cosse is too covetous;
Montmorency cares only for his hunting and hawking; the Count de Retz is
a Spaniard; the other lords of my court and those of my council are mere
blockheads; my Secretaries of State, to hide nothing of what I think, are
not faithful to me; insomuch that, to tell the truth, I know not at what
end to begin." This tone of freedom and confidence had inspired Coligny
with reciprocal confidence; he believed himself to have a decisive
influence over the king's ideas and conduct; and when the Protestants
testified their distrust upon this subject, he reproached them vehemently
for it; he affirmed the king's good intentions and sincerity; and he
considered himself in fact, said Catherine de' Medici with temper,
"a second king of France."
How much sincerity was there about these outpourings of Charles IX. in
his intercourse with Coligny, and how much reality in the admiral's
influence over the king? We are touching upon that great historical
question which has been so much disputed: was the St. Bartholomew a
design, long ago determined upon and prepared for, of Charles IX. and his
government, or an almost sudden resolution, brought about by events and
the situation of the moment, to which Charles IX. was egged on, not
without difficulty, by his mother Catherine and his advisers?
We recall to mind here what was but lately said in this very chapter as
to the condition of minds and morals in the sixteenth century, and as to
the tragic consequences of it. Massacre, we add no qualifying term to
the word, was an idea, a habit, we might say almost a practice, familiar
to that age, and one which excited neither the surprise nor the horror
which are inseparable from it in our day. So little respect for human
life and for truth was shown in the relations between man and man! Not
that those natural sentiments, which do honor to
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