onsort, and for her own life, seized with horror, and half dead, flew
from her bed, in order to throw herself at the feet of the king her
brother. But scarce had she opened her chamber-door, when some of her
protestant domestics rushed in for refuge. The soldiers immediately
followed, pursued them in sight of the princess, and killed one who had
crept under her bed. Two others, being wounded with halberds, fell at
the queen's feet, so that she was covered with blood.

"Count de la Rochefoucault, a young nobleman, greatly in the king's
favour for his comely air, his politeness, and a certain peculiar
happiness in the turn of his conversation, had spent the evening till
eleven o'clock with the monarch, in pleasant familiarity; and had given
a loose, with the utmost mirth, to the sallies of his imagination. The
monarch felt some remorse, and being touched with a kind of compassion,
bid him, two or three times, not to go home, but lie in the Louvre. The
count said, he must go to his wife; upon which the king pressed him no
farther, but said, 'Let him go! I see God has decreed his death.' And in
two hours after he was murdered.

"Very few of the protestants escaped the fury of their enthusiastic
persecutors. Among these was young La Force (afterwards the famous
Marshal de la Force) a child about ten years of age, whose deliverance
was exceedingly remarkable. His father, his elder brother, and himself
were seized together by the Duke of Anjou's soldiers. These murderers
flew at all three, and struck them at random, when they all fell, and
lay one upon another. The youngest did not receive a single blow, but
appearing as if he was dead, escaped the next day; and his life, thus
wonderfully preserved, lasted four score and five years.

"Many of the wretched victims fled to the water-side, and some swam over
the Seine to the suburbs of St. Germaine. The king saw them from his
window, which looked upon the river, and fired upon them with a carbine
that had been loaded for that purpose by one of his pages; while the
queen-mother, undisturbed and serene in the midst of slaughter, looking
down from a balcony, encouraged the murderers and laughed at the dying
groans of the slaughtered. This barbarous queen was fired with a
restless ambition, and she perpetually shifted her party in order to
satiate it.

"Some days after this horrid transaction, the French court endeavoured
to palliate it by forms of law. They pretended to justify t