foreign and priestly despotism. Men, women, and children cheerfully laid
down their lives by thousands in order that the papal legate and the king
of Spain might trample upon that legitimate sovereign of France who was
one day to become the idol of Paris and of the whole kingdom.

A census taken at the beginning of the siege had showed a populace of two
hundred thousand souls, with a sufficiency of provisions, it was thought,
to last one month. But before the terrible summer was over--so
completely had the city been invested--the bushel of wheat was worth
three hundred and sixty crowns, rye and oats being but little cheaper.
Indeed, grain might as well have cost three thousand crowns the bushel,
for the prices recorded placed it beyond the reach of all but the
extremely wealthy. The flesh of horses, asses, dogs, cats, rats had
become rare luxuries. There was nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons. And the priests and monks of every order went daily about
the streets, preaching fortitude in that great resistance to heresy, by
which Paris was earning for itself a crown of glory, and promising the
most direct passage to paradise for the souls of the wretched victims
who fell daily, starved to death, upon the pavements. And the monks and
priests did their work nobly, aiding the general resolution by the
example of their own courage. Better fed than their fellow citizens,
they did military work in trench, guard-house and rampart, as the
population became rapidly unfit, from physical exhaustion, for the
defence of the city.

The young Duke of Nemours, governor of the place, manifested as much
resolution and conduct in bringing his countrymen to perdition as if the
work in which he was engaged had been the highest and holiest that ever
tasked human energies. He was sustained in his task by that proud
princess, his own and Mayenne's mother, by Madame Montpensier, by the