urpose."

"Whether it was that certain ideas rose involuntarily to my mind, or that
I was acting under some irresistible impulse, I said to her--'Ah, madame,
you committed an enormous crime.'

"'What crime?' she asked me in a solemn voice.

"'That of which the Palace clock gave the signal on the 24th of August.'

"She smiled disdainfully. 'You call that a crime?' she said: ''twas
nothing but a misfortune. The enterprise failed, and has, therefore, not
produced all the good we expected from it--to France, to Europe, to
Christianity itself. The orders were ill executed, and posterity makes no
allowance for the want of communication which hindered us from giving all
the unity to our effort which is requisite in affairs of state;--that was
the misfortune. If on the 26th of August there had not remained the shadow
of a Huguenot in France, the latest posterity would have looked upon me
with awe, as a Providence among men. How often have the clear intellects
of Sextus the Fifth, of Richelieu, and Bossuet, secretly accused me of
having failed in the design, after having had the courage to conceive it;
and therefore how my death was regretted! Thirty years after the St
Bartholomew, the malady existed still; and cost France ten times the
quantity of noble blood that remained to be spilt on the 26th August 1572.
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honour of which medals were
struck, cost more blood, more tears, and more treasure, and has been more
injurious to France, than twenty St Bartholomews. If on the 25th August
1572, that enormous execution was necessary, on the 25th August 1685 it
was useless. Under the second son of Henry de Valois heresy was almost
barren; under the second son of Henry de Bourbon she had become a fruitful
mother, and scattered her progeny over the globe. You accuse _me_ of a
crime, and yet you raise statues to the son of Anne of Austria!'

"At these words--slowly uttered--I felt a shudder creep over me. I seemed
to inhale the smell of blood."

"He dreamt that to a certainty," whispered Beaumarchais; "he _could_ not
have invented it."

"'My reason is confounded,' I said to the queen. 'You plume yourself on an
action which three generations have condemned and cursed, and'--

"'And,' she interrupted, 'that history has been more unjust to me than my
contemporaries were. Nobody has taken up my defence. I am accused of
ambition--I, rich and a queen--I am accused of cruelty; and the most
impartial