emand once more that Menendez and his
men should be punished, adding, that he trusts that Philip will grant
justice to the King of France, his brother-in-law and friend, rather
than pardon a gang of brigands. "On this demand," concludes Charles,
"the Sieur de Forquevaulx will not fail to insist, be the answer what it
may, in order that the King of Spain shall understand that his Majesty
of France has no less spirit than his predecessors to repel an insult."
The ambassador fulfilled his commission, and Philip replied by referring
him to the Duke of Alva. "I have no hope," reports Forquevaulx, "that
the Duke will give any satisfaction as to the massacre, for it was he
who advised it from the first." A year passed, and then he reported that
Menendez had returned from Florida, that the King had given him a warm
welcome, and that his fame as a naval commander was such that he was
regarded as a sort of Neptune.

In spite of their brave words, Charles and the Queen Mother tamely
resigned themselves to the affront, for they would not quarrel with
Spain. To have done so would have been to throw themselves into the arms
of the Protestant party, adopt the principle of toleration, and save
France from the disgrace and blight of her later years. France was
not so fortunate. The enterprise of Florida was a national enterprise,
undertaken at the national charge, with the royal commission, and under
the royal standard; and it had been crushed in time of peace by a power
professing the closest friendship. Yet Huguenot influence had prompted
and Huguenot hands executed it. That influence had now ebbed low;
Coligny's power had waned; Charles, after long vacillation, was leaning
more and more towards the Guises and the Catholics, and fast subsiding
into the deathly embrace of Spain, for whom, at last, on the bloody
eve of St. Bartholomew, he was to become the assassin of his own best
subjects.

In vain the relatives of the slain petitioned him for redress; and had
the honor of the nation rested in the keeping of its King, the blood of
hundreds of murdered Frenchmen would have cried from the ground in vain.
But it was not to be so. Injured humanity found an avenger, and outraged
France a champion. Her chivalrous annals may be searched in vain for
a deed of more romantic daring than the vengeance of Dominique de
Gourgues.

CHAPTER X.

1567-1583.

DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES.

There was a gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, Dominique de Go