the medal.]

Such was the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris. The death-roll of
the victims is known to the Recording Angel alone. It was a tremendous
folly no less than an indelible crime, for it steeled the heart of
every Protestant to avenge his slaughtered brethren. To "take Paris
justice" became synonymous with assassination all over Protestant
Europe.

Many of the Huguenot leaders escaped from Paris while the soldiers
sent to despatch them were pillaging, and the flames of civil strife
burst forth fiercer than ever. The court had prepared for massacre,
not for war; and while the king was receiving the felicitations of the
courts of Spain and Rome, he was forced by the Peace of La Rochelle to
concede liberty of conscience to the Protestants and to restore their
sequestered estates and offices. After two years of agony of mind and
remorse, Charles IX. lay dying of consumption, abandoned by all save
his faithful Huguenot nurse. The blood flowing from his nostrils
seemed a token of God's wrath; and moaning "Ah! _ma mie_, what
bloodshed! what murders! I am lost! I am lost!" the poor crowned
wretch passed to his account. He had not yet reached his twenty-fourth
year.

CHAPTER XIII

_Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by Henry IV.--His Conversion,
Reign and Assassination_

When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of
Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have
twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in
horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper
shame. Treacherous and bloody, Henry mingled grovelling piety with
debauchery, and made of the court at Paris a veritable Alsatia, where
paid assassins who stabbed from behind and _mignons_ who struck to the
face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with
their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their
hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads
resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,--gambling,
blaspheming swashbucklers--were hateful alike to Huguenot and
Catholic. On 29th April 1578 three of them fought out a famous quarrel
with three of the Guises' bullies at the horse market subsequently
converted into the Place Royale. The duel began at five o'clock in the
morning and was fought so furiously that three of the combatants lost
their lives. Quelus, the king's favourite minion