priest, almost as aged, assists patiently with his immemorial
consolations at this long, leisurely, scarce perceptible ending to a
long, leisurely life, on the quiet double-holiday morning.*

The wild news of public disaster, penetrating along the country roads
now bristling afresh with signs of universal war, seemed of little
consequence in comparison with that closer grief at home, which made
just then the more effective demand on his sympathy, till the thought
came of the position of Colombe--his wife left behind there in Paris.
Immediate rumour, like subsequent history, gave variously the number-
-the number of thousands--who perished. The great Huguenot leader
was dead, one party at least, the royal party, safe for the moment
and in high spirits. As Charles himself put it, the ancient private
quarrel between the houses of Guise and Chatillon was ended by the
decease of the chief of the latter, Coligni de Chatillon--a death so
saintly after its new fashion that the long-delayed vengeance of
Henri de Guise on the presumed instigator of the murder of his father
seemed a martyrdom. And around that central barbarity the slaughter
had spread over Paris in widening [129] circles. With conflicting
thoughts, in wild terror and grief, Gaston seeks the footsteps of
Colombe, of her people, from their rifled and deserted house to the
abodes of their various acquaintance, like the traces of wrecked men
under deep water. Yet even amid his private distress, queries on
points of more general interest in the event would not be excluded.
With whom precisely, in whose interest had the first guilty motion
been?--Gaston on the morrow asked in vain as the historian asks
still. And more and more as he picked his way among the direful
records of the late massacre, not the cruelty only but the obscurity,
the accidental character, yet, alas! also the treachery, of the
public event seemed to identify themselves tragically with his own