We cannot describe without a groan the excesses to which the capital gave itself up on learning the death of the duke de Guise: the shops closed, the people in crowds in the streets, arms in hand, seeking everywhere the duke d’Aumale, to place him at the head of the League, knocking down the king’s arms wherever met with, and imprisoning every one suspected of fidelity to him. A kind of vertigo or spirit of fury took possession of all the citizens without exception; they willingly allowed themselves to be dragged into the most detestable rebellion. The churches were hung with mourning, and the depositaries of the Word of God proclaimed aloud the martyrdom of the Balafré and his brother. “Those unworthy ministers,” says an historian of the time, “only mounted the pulpit to put forth, instead of the Scriptures, a series of bitter insults against the sovereign, and by the vomitings of an iliad of maledictions, they increased the fury of revolt. The people never came out from their infamous sermons without their brain being on fire, their feet prepared for running, and their hands for fighting, like so many wild beasts, against all who did not wear the badge of the League. The colporteurs of the palace cried nothing but an execration of the life of Henry III., the self-called king. They said that France was sick, and that she could never be cured without giving her a draught of French blood.” The leaders of the sedition sought, however, to colour the public excesses with some specious pretexts. They caused a request to be presented to the faculty of Theology at Paris, in which it was said “that the princes of the house of Lorraine had always deserved well of the Catholic church during their lives, and that, being protectors of the faith, the king had put them to death; that the monarch must be declared to have forfeited his crown, and his subjects be released from their fidelity; that that prince was a hypocrite, a favourer of heresy, a persecutor of the Church, having bathed his hands in the blood of a cardinal, without respect to his person or his sacred character.” The Sorbonne, on the 7th of January, issued a decree, which allowed and even ordered all that this request stated. Lefebvre the dean, and several other doctors, refused to sign this abominable sentence; but the majority prevailed, and gave it all the authority that was desired. The principal Leaguers, armed with this fatal document, tried to lay the foundations of an authority, which the same caprice which gave it to them might deprive them of an instant after. The heads of the sixteen quarters of Paris, all scoundrels, and for the most part the issue of low families, were revered like so many sovereigns. These monsters governed Paris; they were its oracles, and put in motion the arms of all the rebels. They also determined to have the Parliament. Bussy le Clere, governor of the Bastille, who had been a master-at-arms, took upon himself the task of ordering that