“About five in the morning, I ventured to quit the dressing room, and, eager to see what was passing, gazed from one of the windows which looked in the direction of the Fauxbourg St. Germain’s, where Montgomery, Rohan, Pardaillan, and many of the Calvinist gentlemen lodged. As you know, it lies upon the opposite bank of the river from the Louvre; all had hitherto been quiet in that direction, but the sound of the tocsin, and the cries and screams which were heard across the river, had roused the Huguenots, who, suspecting some mischief, hastily prepared to cross the water and join their friends; but as they were about to embark, they saw several boats filled with Swiss and French guards, approaching, who began to fire upon them. It is said the king himself, from his closet window, was seen pointing and apparently directing their movements. They took the hint in time to save their lives by flight. They mounted their horses, and rode off at full speed.” “Thanks be to God, they escaped, as a bird from the hand of the fowler. May they live to avenge the blood of the saints.” “I shall never forget,” continued Paré, “the scene, when the broad light of an August day displayed, in all their extent, the horrors which had been committed. The bright, glowing sun, and the unclouded sky, and magnificent beauty over-head; and at our feet, the blood-stained waters of the Seine, and the streets bestrewn with mangled corpses. It was too terrible. To crown the whole, it was the holy sabbath. “Towards the evening of the second day, the king called again for me. Sickened with horror and remorse, his mind and spirits were giving way. ‘Ambroise,’ said he, taking me into his cabinet, ‘I don’t know what ails me, but these last two or three days, I find both mind and body in great disorder. I see nothing around me but hideous faces, covered with blood. I wish the weak and innocent had been spared.’ I seized the moment of relenting in the unhappy monarch, and urged him to put an immediate stop to the massacre, and he did, in effect, issue orders by sound of trumpet, forbidding any further violence to be committed, upon pain of death.” “Alas!” said Palissy, “no hand was outstretched to save our French Phidias, Jean Goujon, the master of my comrade and co-worker, Bullant. He was struck down on his platform, while working on the Caryatides of the Louvre; with his chisel yet in his hand, he fell a corpse at the foot of the marble his genius was moulding into life.” “No power could restrain the violence of the rabble. In vain were the royal commands, and useless every effort of the bourgeoisie, and the higher orders. Day after day the barbarous slaughter continued. Ah! my friend,” concluded Paré, “that fatal night will form a black page in our history, which Frenchmen will vainly desire to erase, or to tear from its records.”—(“Feuillet de notre histoire à arracher, à brûler.”) CHAPTER XV.