me violence, or whether the archers were after him in
particular, or after me. We both screamed, and each of us was as much
frightened as the other. At last it pleased God that M. de Nanqay,
captain of the guards, came in, who, finding me in this plight, though he
felt compassion, could not help laughing; and, flying into a great rage
with the archers for this indiscretion, he made them begone, and gave me
the life of that poor man who had hold of me, whom I had put to bed and
attended to in my closet, until he was well."

[Illustration: The Queen of Navarre and the Huguenot----372]

We might multiply indefinitely these anecdotical scenes of the massacre,
most of them brutally ferocious, others painfully pathetic, some generous
and calculated to preserve the credit of humanity amidst one of its most
direful aberrations. History must show no pity for the vices and crimes
of men, whether princes or people; and it is her duty as well as her
right to depict them so truthfully that men's souls and imaginations may
be sufficiently impressed by them to conceive disgust and horror at them;
but it is not by dwelling upon them and by describing them minutely, as
if she had to exhibit a gallery of monsters and madmen, that history can
lead men's minds to sound judgments and salutary impressions; it is
necessary to have moral sense and good sense always in view, and set high
above great social troubles, just as sailors, to struggle courageously
against the tempest, need to see a luminous corner where the sky is
visible, and a star which reveals to them the port. We take no pleasure,
and we see no use, in setting forth in detail the works of evil; we
should be inclined to fear that, by familiarity with such a spectacle,
men would lose the perception of good, and cease to put hope in its
legitimate and ultimate superiority. Nor will we pause either to discuss
the secondary questions which meet us at the period of which we are
telling the story; for example, the question whether Charles IX. fired
with his own hand on his Protestant subjects whom he had delivered over
to the evil passions of the aristocracy and of the populace, or whether
the balcony from which he is said to have indulged in this ferocious
pastime existed at that time, in the sixteenth century, at the palace of
the Louvre, and overlooking the Seine. These questions are not without
historic interest, and it is well for learned men to study them; but we
consider th