all about, he flung it aside, and turned to the further slaughter of those who believed therein. In such action he saw his peculiar mission for the moment, but he was not allowed to pursue it unopposed. His intrigues and his cruelties made rebels even of the princes of the blood; and Condé took the field to revenge their wrongs, as well as those of the Reformers. The issue was tried on the bloody day at Dreux, when the setting sun went down on a Protestant army routed, and on Condé a captive; but sharing the bed, as was the custom of the time, of his proved victor Guise. Never did two more deadly enemies lie on the same couch, sleepless, and full of mutual suspicion. But the hatred of Condé was a loyal hatred; that of Guise was marked by treacherous malignity. The Protestant party, in presence of that hot fury, seemed to melt away like a snow-wraith in the sun. He and his Guisards were the terror of the so-called enemies of the Faith. Those whom he could not reach by the sword, he struck down by wielding against them the helpless hand of the king, who obeyed with the passiveness of a _Marionette_, and raised stakes, and fired the pile, and gave the victim thereto, simply because Guise would so have it. The duke received one portion at least of his coveted reward. At every massacre of inoffensive Protestants, the Catholic pulpits resounded with biblical names, showered down upon him by the exulting preachers. When his banner had swept triumphantly over successive fields, whose after-crops were made rich by heretical blood, then did the church pronounce him to be a soldier divinely armed, who had at length “consecrated his hands, and avenged the quarrel of the Lord.” Guise lived, it is true, at a period when nothing was held so cheap as life. Acts of cruelty were but too common in all factions. If he delivered whole towns to pillage and its attendant horrors, compared with which death were merciful, he would himself exhibit compassion, based on impulse or caprice. He was heroic, according to the thinking of his age, which considered heroism as being constituted solely of unflinching courage. In all other respects, the duke, great as he was, was as mean as the veriest knave who trailed a pike in his own bands. Scarcely a letter addressed to his officers reached them without having been previously read to their right worshipful master. There was scarcely a mansion in the kingdom, whose lord was a man of influence, but that at that table and the hearth there sat a guest who was the paid spy of Francis of Guise.