For that so-called murder, Guise had his revenge on the day of St. Bartholomew, when he vainly hoped that the enemies of his house had perished for ever. On the head of more than one member of the house of Guise rests the responsibility of that terrible day. During the slaughter, Guise gained his revenge, but lost his love. The cries of the victims were the nuptial songs chanted at the marriage-ceremony of Henri of Navarre and Margaret, the King’s sister. The latter had looked, nothing loath, upon the suit offered to her by Guise, who was an ardent wooer. But the wooing had been roughly broken in upon by the lady’s brother, the Duc d’Anjou, who declared aloud in the Louvre, that if Guise dared look with lover’s eyes upon “Margot,” he would run his knife into the lover’s throat! The threat had its influence, and the unfaithful wooer, who had been all the while solemnly affianced to a Princess Catherine of Cleves, married that remarkable brunette, and showed his respect for her, by speaking and writing of her as “that amiable lady, the negress.” It may be noticed in passing, that the objection of D’Anjou to Guise as a brother-in-law, was not personal; it had a political foundation. The two dukes became, indeed, brothers-in-law; not by Guise marrying the sister of D’Anjou, but by D’Anjou marrying the sister of Guise, and by sharing with her the throne which he, subsequently, occupied rather than enjoyed, as Henri III. When summoned to the throne by the unedifying death of Charles IX., Henry of Anjou was king of Poland. He escaped from that country with difficulty, in order to wear a more brilliant but a more fatal crown in France. He had no sooner assumed it, when he beheld the Guises encircling him, and leaving him neither liberty nor will. The Protestants were driven into rebellion. They found a leader in Henry of Navarre, and Guise and his friends made war against them, irrespective of the King’s consent, and cut in pieces, with their swords, the treaties entered into between the two Henrys, without the consent of the third Henri--of Guise and Lorraine. The latter so completely enslaved the weak and unhappy sovereign, as to wring from him, against his remonstrance and conviction, the famous articles of Nemours, wherein it was solemnly decreed in the name of the King, and confirmed by the signature of Guise, that, thenceforward, it was the will of God that there should be but one faith in France, and that the opposers thereof would find that opposition incurred death. There is a tradition that when Henri III. was told of this decree, he was seated in deep meditation, his head resting upon his hand; and that when he leaped to his feet with emotion, at the impiety of the declaration, it was observed that the part of his moustache which had been covered by his hand, had suddenly turned gray.