Not until the second day does there appear to have been any remorse or
pity for the horrors inflicted upon the wretched Huguenots. Elizabeth of
Austria, the young Queen who hoped shortly to become a mother,
interceded for Conde, and so great was her agitation and distress that
her "features were quite disfigured by the tears she had shed night and
day." And, the Duke of Alencon, a youth of by no means lovable
character, "wept much," we are told, "over the fate of those brave
captains and soldiers." For this tenderness he was so bitterly
reproached by Charles and his mother that he was forced to keep out of
their sight. Alencon was partial to Coligny, and when there was found
among the admiral's papers a report in which he condemned appanages, the
grants usually given by the crown to the younger members of the royal
family, Catherine exultingly showed it to him--"See what a fine friend
he was to you."
"I know not how far he may have been my friend," replied the Duke, "but
the advice he gave me was very good."
If Mezeray is to be trusted, Charles broke down on the second day of the
massacre. Since Saturday he had been in a state of extraordinary
excitement, more like madness than sanity, and at last his mind gave way
under the pressure. To his surgeon, Ambrose Pare, who kept at his side
all through these dreadful hours, he said: "I do not know what ails me.
For these two or three days past, both mind and body have been quite
upset. I burn with fever; all around me grin pale blood-stained faces.
Ah! Ambrose, if they had but spared the weak and innocent." A change,
indeed, had come over him; be became more restless than ever, his looks
savage, his buffoonery coarser and more boisterous. "_Ne mai poteva
pigliar requie_" says Sigismond Cavalli. Like Macbeth, he had murdered
sleep. "I saw the King on my return from Rochelle," says Brantome, "and
found him entirely changed. His features had lost all the gentleness
[_douceur_] usually visible in them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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