One other point remains. Charles, on the 25th, represented the massacre in Paris as a collision between the houses of Guise and Chatillon; but from the 26th he uniformly charges a conspiracy against his person. This he announced to all the foreign courts in explanation. {17} His letter to Gregory XIII. announced the escape of the royal family and the punishment of the conspirators. The nuncio Salviati, in his letters, shows a belief in the reality of the plot. At Rome, the Cardinal of Lorraine, brother of the murdered Guise, was high in influence. What his views and feelings would be on the receipt of the tidings of the discovery of a plot, and the sudden action of the king, it is easy to conceive. In his eyes it was a triumph of justice, religion, loyalty, and law. The pope received the same impression, and under it proceeded to chant a _Te Deum_ at Santa Maria Maggiore. Processions followed. A medal, well known from its frequent reproduction, was struck. But in all this there is nothing to show that Rome knew of the intended massacre or counselled it. Gregory XIII. approved it, only as represented in the brief despatches of Charles IX. and the verbal statements of Beauvillé, to which they refer. Nor did the clergy in France take any part. No bishop shared in the council, no priest or religious roused the minds of the people. They figure, indeed, in romances, but history is silent. Even in the most virulent pamphlets of the time only three are ever mentioned, the Bishop of Troyes, Sorbin, king's confessor at Orleans, and Father Edmond Auger, at Bordeaux. The Bishop of Troyes is charged with having approved the massacre there, but White does not even name the bishop in connection with the murders at that place, and says they were done by a drunken mob, and "filled the humane Catholics with horror." At Orleans, White reduces the 1850 of the _Martyrologe_ to 1400, and gives details, but is silent as to any action of Sorbin, or the terrible Franciscan who insulted the Huguenots, received their abjuration, and said Mass for them. Evidently, White found the charges against these clergymen too frivolous even for a stray allusion. He attributes the massacre at Bordeaux to the preaching of Father Auger, but cites no authority. Fortunately, Auger is not an unknown man. His life has long been in circulation. He was a missionary, known for years among the Protestants, amid whom he had prosecuted his labors. He had suffered imprisonment for the faith; he had even been led to the gallows by order of the Baron des Adrets. So notorious were his charity, his virtue, and his merit, that the voice of Protestant and Catholic alike was raised to save him. Are we to believe on the vaguest of grounds that such a man suddenly became a monster of intolerance? White blushed to give his authority; he should have been ashamed to make the charge.