well in one corner of the yard, not far from an orange-tree, the leaves of which (says local tradition) were ever afterward marked with the blood-stains of this massacre. The Michelade has been contrasted with the St. Bartholomew, but there is this difference between the two crimes: the former was committed in despite of the exhortations of the pastors, and no one has attempted to justify it. After the peace of Longjumeau, the Parliament of Toulouse prosecuted all who had taken any part in the murders. More than a hundred persons were condemned by default to be hanged and to pay 200,000 livres, of which 60,000 were allotted to the repair of the churches, 6000 to Gui’s widow, and the remainder to the families of the victims. Only four were caught, who, after being dragged through the city at the horse’s tail, were beheaded, and their quarters hung up over the principal gates. In the September of the following year, the brutal scenes of violence were renewed: the city was plundered, and its streets were dyed with Catholic blood. The governor, St. André, was shot and thrown out of the window, and his corpse was torn in pieces by the lawless mob. In the country round Nismes forty-eight unresisting Catholics were murdered; and at Alais the Huguenots massacred seven canons, two grey-friars, and several other churchmen. Even at the little town of Gap, far away among the Upper Alps, the followers of the two religions, who had hitherto lived together on friendly terms, now sought each other’s blood. The outbreak was occasioned by the attempt of the Catholics to wear a white cross--a badge of distinction recently adopted among the Romanists. The two parties came to blows, and, says their historian, “they vied with one another in cruelty.”[403] It was the same wherever the two armies marched. “Our people,” writes Languet, “burn all the monasteries and destroy all the churches they come near: but the Germans (that is, the reiters) spoil friends and enemies alike.” Castelnau confirms this statement: “When Blois capitulated, faith was not kept with the governor and inhabitants on the ground that the Catholics boasted of not keeping their promise to the Huguenots. So that on both sides the _droit des gens_ was violated without any shame.... What the Huguenots spared was plundered by the Catholics.”[404] Even the dead were not left in peace; in more than one instance the corpses were exhumed and treated with savage barbarity.