prevailed in Spain. Mendoca knows not which to admire more, the loyal and Catholic inhabitants of Paris, or Charles, who justified his title of the most Christian King by helping with his own hands to slaughter his subjects.[90] Mariana witnessed the carnage, and imagined that it must gladden every Catholic heart. Other Spaniards were gratified to think that it had been contrived with Alva at Bayonne. Alva himself did not judge the event by the same light as Philip. He also had distrusted the French Government; but he had not feared it during the ascendency of the Huguenots. Their fall appeared to him to strengthen France. In public he rejoiced with the rest. He complimented Charles on his valour and his religion, and claimed his own share of merit. But he warned Philip that things had not changed favourably for Spain, and that the King of France was now a formidable neighbour.[91] For himself, he said, he never would have committed so base a deed. The seven Catholic Cantons had their own reason for congratulation. Their countrymen had been busy actors on the scene; and three soldiers of the Swiss guard of Anjou were named as the slayers of the Admiral.[92] On the 2nd of October they agreed to raise 6000 men for the King's service. At the following Diet they demanded the expulsion of the fugitive Huguenots who had taken refuge in the Protestant parts of the Confederation. They made overtures to the Pope for a secret alliance against their Confederates.[93] In Italy, where the life of a heretic was cheap, their wholesale destruction was confessed a highly politic and ingenious act. Even the sage Venetians were constrained to celebrate it with a procession. The Grand Duke Cosmo had pointed out two years before that an insidious peace would afford excellent opportunities of extinguishing Protestantism; and he derived inexpressible consolation from the heroic enterprise.[94] The Viceroy of Naples, Cardinal Granvelle, received the tidings coldly. He was surprised that the event had been so long postponed, and he reproved the Cardinal of Lorraine for the unstatesmanlike delay.[95] The Italians generally were excited to warmer feelings. They saw nothing to regret but the death of certain Catholics who had been sacrificed to private revenge. Profane men approved the skill with which the trap was laid; and pious men acknowledged the presence of a genuine religious spirit in the French court.[96] The nobles and the Parisian populace were admired for their valour in obeying the sanctified commands of the good King. One fervent enthusiast praises God for the heavenly news, and also St. Bartholomew for having lent his extremely penetrating knife for the salutary sacrifice.[97] A month after the event the renowned preacher Panigarola delivered from the pulpit a panegyric on the monarch who had achieved what none had ever heard or read before, by banishing heresy in a single day, and by a single word, from the Christian land of France.[98]