Such are a few of the anecdotes told of that night of terror. They might be extended indefinitely, but anecdotes of murder are not of the most attractive character, and may profitably be passed over. The king saved some, including his nurse and Ambrose Pare his surgeon, both Huguenots. Two others, destined in the future to play the highest parts in the kingdom, were saved by his orders. These were the two Huguenot princes, Henry of Navarre, and Henry de Conde. The king sent for them during the height of the massacre, and bade them recant or die. "I mean, for the future," he said, "to have but one religion in my kingdom; the mass or death; make your choice." The king of Navarre asked for time to consider the subject, reminding Charles of his promised protection. Conde was defiant. "I will remain firm in what I believe to be the true religion," he said, "though I have to give up my life for it." "Seditious madman, rebel, and son of a rebel," cried the king, furiously, "if within three days you do not change your language, I will have you strangled." In three days Charles himself changed his language. Remorse succeeded his insensate rage. "Ambrose," he said to his surgeon, "I do not know what has come over me for the last two or three days, but I feel my mind and body greatly excited; in fact, just as if I had a fever. It seems to me every moment, whether I wake or sleep, that these murdered corpses appear to me with hideous and blood-covered faces. I wish the helpless and innocent had not been included." On the next day he issued orders, prohibiting, on pain of death, any slaying or plundering. But he had raised a fury not easily to be allayed. The tocsin of death still rang; to it the great bell of the palace added at intervals its clanging peal; shouts, yells, the sharp reports of pistols and arquebuses, the shrieks of victims, filled the air; sixty thousand murderers thronged the streets, slaying all who wore not the white cross, breaking into and plundering houses, and slaughtering all within them. All through that dreadful Sunday the crimson carnival went on, death everywhere, wagons loaded with bleeding bodies traversing the streets, to cast their gory burdens into the Seine, a scene of frightful massacre prevailing such as city streets have seldom witnessed. The king judged feebly if he deemed that with a word he could quell the storm his voice had raised. Many of the nobles of the court, satisfied with the death of the Huguenot leaders, attempted to stay the work of death, but a report that a party of Huguenots had attempted to kill the king added to the popular fury, and the sanguinary work went on.