find a way of
escape. But with Satanic foresight, the boats usually moored there had
been conveyed to the other side. Thus some hundreds of Huguenots were
brought to bay, and done to death under the very eyes of the King who
had unleashed this horror. Doors were crashed open, flames rose to
heaven, men and women were shot down under the palace wall, bodies were
flung from windows, and on every side--in the words of D'Aubigne--the
blood now flowed, seeking the river.

The King watched a while, screams and curses pouring from his lips to
be lost in the horrible uproar. He turned, perhaps to upbraid his mother
and his brother, but found that they were no longer at his side.
Behind him in the room a page was crouching, watching him with a white,
horrified face.

Suddenly the King laughed--it was the fierce, hysterical laugh of a
madman. His eyes fell on the arquebuses flanking the picture of the
Mother of Mercy. He took one of them down, then caught the boy by the
collar of his doublet and dragged him forward to the window.

"Hither, and load for me!" he bade him, between peals of his terrible
laughter. Then he levelled the weapon across the sill of the window.
"Parpaillots! Parpaillots!" he screamed. "Kill! Kill!" and he discharged
the arquebus into a fleeing group of Huguenots.

Five days later, the King--who by now had thrown the blame of the whole
affair, with its slaughter of some two thousand Huguenots, upon the
Guises and their hatred of Coligny--rode out to Montfaucon to behold the
decapitated body of the Admiral, which hung from the gallows in chains.
A courtier of a poor but obtrusive wit leaned towards him.

"The Admiral becomes noisome, I think," he said.

The King's green eyes considered him, his lips curling grimly.

"The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet," he said.

VI. THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT--Louis XIV and Madame De Montespan

If you scrape the rubbish-heap of servile, coeval flattery that usually
smothers the personality of a monarch, you will discover a few kings
who have been truly great; many who have achieved greatness because they
were wisely content to serve as masks for the great intellects of their
time; and, for the rest, some bad kings, some foolish kings, and some
ridiculous kings. But in all that royal gallery of history you will
hardly find a more truly absurd figure than that of the resplendent Roi
Soleil, the Grand Monarque, the Fourteenth Louis of France.

I am no