In the first moments of his fear, the Cardinal de Lorraine had sent to the Parliament an ordinance of amnesty, from which the preachers, and those who had conspired under pretext of religion, alone were excepted. But when he was certain of triumph, he made his revenge an even balance against his terror, and it was terrible. Twelve hundred of the conspirators perished at Amboise. The public place was covered with gallows; blood flowed in streams through the streets. No inquiry, no form of trial, was permitted; and as there were not executioners enough, the prisoners were thrown by hundreds, tied hand and foot, into the waves of the Loire. This same river was destined to engulf other victims: across the abyss of centuries, the Cardinal Charles de Lorraine and Carrier de Nantes may shake hands. There was worse than this done in 1560. The Cardinal reserved the chiefs for after dinner, as Regnier de la Planche tells us, that he might afford a pastime to the ladies, whom he perceived to be weary of their long stay in this fortress. The queen-mother and the courtiers placed themselves at the windows, _as if they were about to witness some mummery, or jugglers show_. “And the Cardinal pointed out to them the sufferers, with all the signs of a man greatly pleased, that he might so much the more animate the prince against his subjects.”[34] Many of the condemned displayed wonderful firmness. A gentleman named Villemongis, having dipped his hands in the blood of his companions, raised them to heaven, crying: “Lord, this is the blood of Thy children unrighteously spilled: Thou wilt avenge it.” The Baron de Castelnau, who, having been taken by the Spaniards in the Flemish wars, had spent, like the Admiral Coligny, the long days of his captivity in reading the Bible, was examined in the prison of Amboise by the Guises and the Chancellor Olivier. The latter inquired of him, mockingly, what it was that could have made, of a soldier, so learned a divine. “When I came to see you on my return from Flanders,” said Castelnau, “I told you how I had passed my time. You approved of it then, and we were good friends. Why are we not so now? It is that, being then disgraced and out of favour, you spoke with sincerity. To-day, in order to please a man whom you despise, you are a traitor to your God and your conscience.” The Cardinal wished to come to the aid of the Chancellor, saying that it was he who had fortified him in the faith, and he set himself to expound a controversial thesis. Castelnau appealed to the duke François de Guise, who answered that he understood nothing about it. “Would to Heaven it were otherwise!” cried the prisoner; “for I esteem you well enough to think that if you were as enlightened as your brother, you would follow better things.”