The best picture of the massacre of St Bartholomew we have read in a book of fiction, is given by M. Merimee, in small compass and without unnecessary horrors. Less than an hour before its commencement, the Countess informs her lover of the fate reserved for him and all of his faith. She urges and implores him to abjure his heresy; he steadfastly refuses--and she, her love redoubled by his courageous constancy, conceals him from the assassins. In the disguise of a monk, he escapes from Paris, and makes his way to La Rochelle, the last stronghold of the persecuted Protestants. On the road, he falls in with another refugee, the _lanzknecht_ Captain Dietrich Hornstein, similarly disguised and bound to the same place. There is an excellent scene at a country inn, where four ruffians, their hands reeking with Protestant blood, compel the false Franciscans to baptise a pair of pullets by the names of carp and perch, that they may not sin by eating fowl on Friday. Mergy at last loses patience, and breaks a bottle over one of their heads; and a fight ensues, in which the bandits are worsted. The two Huguenots reach La Rochelle, which is soon afterwards besieged by the king's troops. In a sortie, Bernard forms an ambuscade, into which his brother unfortunately falls, and receives a mortal wound. Taken into La Rochelle, he is laid upon a bed to die; and, refusing the spiritual assistance of Catholic priest and Protestant minister, he accelerates his death by a draught from Hornstein's wine flask, and strives to comfort Bernard, who is frantic with remorse. "He again closed his eyes, but soon re-opened them and said to Mergy: 'Madame de Turgis bade me assure you of her love.' He smiled gently. These were his last words. In a quarter of an hour he died, without appearing to suffer much. A few minutes later Beville expired in the arms of the monk, who afterwards declared that he had distinctly heard in the air the cries of joy of the angels who received the soul of the penitent, whilst subterraneous demons responded with a yell of triumph as they bore away the spiritual part of Captain George." "It is to be seen in any history of France, how La Noue left La Rochelle, disgusted with civil wars and tormented by his conscience, which reproached him for bearing arms against his king; how the Catholic army was compelled to raise the siege, and how the fourth peace was made, soon followed by the death of Charles IX. "Did Mergy console himself? Did Diana take another lover? I leave it to the decision of the reader, who thus will end the romance to his own liking."