drawing away his _custode_, the king said to her, giving vent to a heavy
sigh, and shedding tears plentifully, insomuch that they interrupted his
discourse--'Ah! my dear nurse! my beloved woman, what blood! what
murders! Ah! I have followed wicked advice! O my God! pardon me, and be
merciful. I know not where I am, they have made me so perplexed and
agitated. How will all this end!--What shall I do? I am lost for ever! I
know it.'--Then the nurse thus addressed him:--'Sire, be the murders on
those who forced you to order them; your majesty could not help it, and
since you never consented, and now regret them, believe God will never
impute them to you, and will cover them with the mantle of justice of
his Son, to whom alone you should look for aid. Ah! for the honour of
God, let your majesty cease from this weeping.' Having said this, she
rose for a handkerchief, for his was drenched with tears: Charles having
taken it from her, made a sign that she should retire and leave him to
repose."

The dreadful narrative of the massacre of St. Bartholomew is detailed in
the history of De Thou; and the same scene is painted in glowing, though
in faithful colours, by Voltaire in the Henriade.--Charles, whose last
miserable moments we come from contemplating, when he observed several
fugitive Huguenots about his palace in the morning after the massacre of
30,000 of their friends, took a fowling-piece, and repeatedly fired at
them.

Such was the effect of religion operating, perhaps not on a malignant,
but on a feeble mind!