"Not I, lady! not I!" exclaimed the perfumer, with a look of disgust and horror at the very name of that fearful massacre. "Not I, indeed! not for the world would I have borne a part, either in that shameful affair, or in the late brutal murder of the great Duke and the Cardinal de Guise." "Why, how now!" cried Beatrice. "Would you, who hold life so lightly, and take it so carelessly from others; would you affect scruples at slaying those you consider heretics, or at putting away ambitious tyrants?" "Lady, you mistake it altogether," answered the dealer in poisons, with a grim smile. "The Huguenots are heretics, and damnable heretics, since such is your good pleasure and the Pope's: but in that capacity I have nought to do with them. The Guises were tyrants if you will; though Heaven forbid that any ears but yours should hear me say so! But they tyrannised not over me. What I objected to, was the manner of the thing; and it is the manner that, in this world, makes the only difference between crime and virtue. What is murder in one manner, is war and glory in another; what is fraud in a merchant, is skill in a minister; what is base when done in a burgher's coat and with a simpering smile, is noble when done in royal robes and with a kingly frown. Now, what could be more beastly, or brutal, or indecent, than to cut the throats of some hundreds of men in their beds, stain all their pillows with blood, and throw the old admiral himself, half-naked, out of a window? What could be more cruel than to put them for hours in mortal terror; inflict upon them excruciating wounds, and, in some instances, leave them half dead, half-living, when the whole might have been effected without pain, without fear, without bloodshed, in the midst of some gay banquet, or some pleasant carouse: where they would all have died as if they were going to sleep! Nay, nay, lady! our late royal mistress made there a great and a cruel mistake; and as for the Guises--Pho! was ever anything so stupid and so filthy as to swim the King's own closet with gore, and have a man reeling and tumbling about in the midst, under the strokes of half-a-dozen daggers! I cannot conceive how the King, who is as delicate a gentleman as any in all France, could consent to such an indecency."