virtue combined. It was deemed necessary to remove this illustrious man,
not because he was personally obnoxious, but because he was the leader
of the Protestant party.

It is said that as the fatal hour approached to give the signal for the
meditated massacre, Aug. 24, 1572, the King appeared irresolute and
disheartened. Though cruel, perfidious, and weak, he shrank from
committing such a gigantic crime, and this too in the face of his royal
promises. But there was one person whom no dangers appalled, and whose
icy soul could be moved by no compassion and no voice of conscience. At
midnight, Catherine entered the chamber of her irresolute son, in the
Louvre, on whose brow horror was already stamped, and whose frame
quivered with troubled chills. Coloring the crime with the usual
sophistries of all religious and political persecution, that the end
justifies the means, and stigmatizing him as a coward, she at last
extorted from his quivering lips the fatal order; and immediately the
tocsin of death sounded from the great bell of the church of St. Germain
de Auxerrois. At once the slaughter commenced in every corner of Paris,
so well were the horrid measures concerted. Screams of despair were
mingled with shouts of vengeance; the cries of the murdered were added
to the imprecations of the murderers; the streets flowed with blood, the
dead rained from the windows, the Seine became purple. Men, women, and
children were seen flying in every direction, pursued by soldiers, who
were told that an insurrection of Protestants had broken out. No sex or
age or dignity was spared, no retreat afforded a shelter, not even the
churches of the Catholics. Neither Alaric nor Attila ever inflicted such
barbarities. No besieged city taken by assault ever saw such wanton
butcheries, except possibly Jerusalem when taken by Titus or Godfrey,
or Magdeburg when taken by Tilly. And as the bright summer sun
illuminated the city on a Sunday morning the massacre had but just