put
on mourning weeds, and spurned the apologies of the French envoy with
contempt. At Rome, on the contrary, the news of the massacre created a
joy beyond description. The Pope, accompanied by his cardinals, went
solemnly to the church of Saint Mark to render thanks to God for the
grace thus singularly vouchsafed to the Holy See and to all Christendom;
and a Te Deum was performed in presence of the same august assemblage.

But nothing could exceed the satisfaction which the event occasioned in
the mind of Philip the Second. There was an end now of all assistance
from the French government to the Netherland Protestants. "The news of
the events upon Saint Bartholomew's day," wrote the French envoy at
Madrid, Saint Goard, to Charles IX., "arrived on the 7th September. The
King, on receiving the intelligence, showed, contrary to his natural
custom, so much gaiety, that he seemed more delighted than with all the
good fortune or happy incidents which had ever before occurred to him. He
called all his familiars about him in order to assure them that your
Majesty was his good brother, and that no one else deserved the title of
Most Christian. He sent his secretary Cayas to me with his felicitations
upon the event, and with the information that he was just going to Saint
Jerome to render thanks to God, and to offer his prayers that your
Majesty might receive Divine support in this great affair. I went to see
him next morning, and as soon as I came into his presence he began to
laugh, and with demonstrations of extreme contentment, to praise your
Majesty as deserving your title of Most Christian, telling me there was
no King worthy to be your Majesty's companion, either for valor or
prudence. He praised the steadfast resolution and the long dissimulation
of so great an enterprise, which all the world would not be able to
comprehend."

"I thanked him," continued the embassador, "and I said that I thanked God
for enabling your Majesty to prove to his Master that his apprentice had
learned his trade, and deserved his title of most Christian King. I
added, that he ought to confess that he owed the preservation of the
Netherlands to your Majesty."

Nothing certainly could, in Philip's apprehension, be more delightful
than this most unexpected and most opportune intelligence. Charles IX.,
whose intrigues in the Netherlands he had long known, had now been
suddenly converted by this stupendous crime into his most powerful ally,
while