exploit. The salvos of artillery, the illuminations and rejoicings, the
solemn processions and masses by which the auspicious event had been
celebrated, mere yet fresh in the memory of men. The ambassadors were
sufficiently embarrassed by the distinct and determined approbation which
they had recently expressed. Although the King, by formal proclamation,
had assumed the whole responsibility, as he had notoriously been one of
the chief perpetrators of the deed, his agents were now to stultify
themselves and their monarch by representing, as a deplorable act of
frenzy, the massacre which they had already extolled to the echo as a
skilfully executed and entirely commendable achievement.

To humble the power of Spain, to obtain the hand of Queen Elizabeth for
the Duke d'Alencon, to establish an insidious kind of protectorate over
the Protestant princes of Germany, to obtain the throne of Poland for the
Duke of Anjou, and even to obtain the imperial crown for the house of
Valois--all these cherished projects seemed dashed to the ground by the
Paris massacre and the abhorrence which it had created. Charles and
Catharine were not slow to discover the false position in which they had
placed themselves, while the Spanish jocularity at the immense error
committed by France was visible enough through the assumed mask of holy
horror.

Philip and Alva listened with mischievous joy to the howl of execration
which swept through Christendom upon every wind. They rejoiced as
heartily in the humiliation of the malefactors as they did in the
perpetration of the crime. "Your Majesty," wrote Louis of Nassau, very
bluntly, to King Charles, "sees how the Spaniard, your mortal enemy,
feasts himself full with the desolation of your affairs; how he laughs,
to-split his sides, at your misfortunes. This massacre has enabled him
to weaken your Majesty more than he could have done by a war of thirty