When the massacre of S. Bartholomew was determined on in 1572, sealed orders were sent to the Count-Bishop of Le Puy as to all other governors to order a butchery of the Huguenots. Antoine de S. Nectaire was bishop at the time. He was the brother of the famous Madelaine who had been married to Guy de Miremont. Left a widow when young, beautiful, and rich, she was surrounded by aspirants after her hand. Madelaine had embraced the reform of Calvin. She enrolled her sixty lovers in a corps to serve as bodyguard. A word, a look sufficed to send this enthusiastic corps to smash crucifixes, burn villages, and storm castles. She rode in armour at the head of her suitors, and of an army that had gathered about her eager for plunder. She advanced to the gates of Riom and Clermont at its head, taking fortresses and burning towns and villages on her way. The King's Lieutenant, the Sieur de Montal, was routed by her in several encounters, and he, exasperated at his humiliation, resolved on storming and destroying her castle of Miremont, to which she had withdrawn. So soon as he appeared before it, at the head of the royal troops, she issued from the gates, her visor raised and mounted on a noble steed, sword in hand, followed by her bodyguard, engaged the lieutenant in single combat and smote him from his steed. Finally, after an ineffectual siege that lasted forty days, Madelaine forced the royal host to retire. "Ventre saint gris!" exclaimed Henry of Navarre, "if I were not king, I would desire to be Madelaine de Saint Nectaire!" This by the way. Her brother was Bishop of Le Puy, and by no means inclined to accept Calvinism. When the order came to him requiring a massacre of the Huguenots in Le Puy, he called the consuls together, and read to them the royal letter. "Messieurs," said he, "this concerns only rebels and disloyal Calvinists, and there are none such here. We read in the Gospel that the love of God and of our neighbours form the sum of the Law and the Prophets. Let us live together as a Christian people in all good charity." This was excellent. If we knew no more of him than this, we would set him down as an enlightened prelate and a man of high principle. But unhappily it is not all.