e foot of an old tower, under
the site of the bed-chamber of the Duchesses of Chatillon, where, in all
probability, Coligny was born. The more tardy the homage, the greater.

The actual murderers of Coligny, the real projectors of the
St. Bartholomew, Catherine de' Medici and her son the Duke of Anjou, at
the very moment when they had just ordered the massacre, were seized with
affright at the first sound of their crime. The Duke of Anjou finishes
his story with this page "After but two hours' rest during the night,
just as the day was beginning to break, the king, the queen my mother,
and I went to the frontal of the Louvre, adjoining the tennis-court, into
a room which looks upon the area of the stable-yard, to see the
commencement of the work. We had not been there long when, as we were
weighing the issues and the consequence of so great an enterprise, on
which, sooth to say, we had up to that time scarcely bestowed a thought,
we heard a pistol-shot fired. I could not say in what spot, or whether
it knocked over anybody; but well know I that the sound wounded all three
of us so deeply in spirit that it knocked over our senses and judgment,
stricken with terror and apprehension at the great troubles which were
then about to set in. To prevent them, we sent a gentleman at once and
with all haste to M. de Guise, to tell him and command him expressly from
us to retire into his quarters, and be very careful to take no steps
against the admiral, this single command putting a stop to everything
else, because it had been determined that in no spot in the city should
any steps be taken until, as a preliminary, the admiral had been killed.
But soon afterwards the gentleman returning told us that M. de Guise had
answered him that the command came too late, that the admiral was dead,
and the work was begun throughout the rest of the city. So we went back
to our original determination, and let ourselves follow the thread and
the course of the enterprise."

The enterprise, in fact, followed its thread and natural course without
its being in the power of anybody to arrest or direct it. It had been
absolutely necessary to give information of it the evening before to the
provost of tradesmen of Paris, Le Charron, president in the court of
taxation (Board of Excise), and to the chief men of the city. According
to Brantome, "they made great difficulties and imported conscience into
the matter; but M. de Tavannes, in the king's