d old man, and to express their grief and horror at the event.
They commanded that a careful list of the names and abode of every
Protestant in Paris be made, in order, as they said, "to take them
under their own immediate protection."

"My dear father," said the king, "the hurt is yours, the grief is mine."

At that moment the knives were already sharpened, every man instructed
in his part in the hideous drama, and the signal for its commencement
determined upon. Charles did not know it, but his mother did. She
went to her son's room that night, artfully and eloquently pictured the
danger he was in, confessed to him that she had authorized the attempt
upon Coligny, but that it was done because of the admiral's plottings
against him, which she had discovered. But the Guises--her enemies and
his--they knew it, and would denounce her and the king! The only thing
now is to finish the work. He must die.

Charles was in frightful agitation and stubbornly refused. Finally,
with an air of offended dignity, she bowed coldly and said to her son,
"Sir, will you permit me to withdraw with my daughter from your
kingdom?" The wretched Charles was conquered. In a sort of insane
fury he exclaimed, "Well, let them kill him, and all the rest of the
Huguenots too. See that not one remains to reproach me."

This was more than she had hoped. All was easy now. So eager was she
to give the order before a change of mood, that she flew herself to
give the signal, fully two hours earlier than was expected. At
midnight the tocsin rang out upon the night, and the horror began.

Lulled to a feeling of security by artfully contrived circumstances,
husbands, wives, sons, daughters, peacefully sleeping, were awakened to
see each other hideously slaughtered.

The stars have looked down upon some terrible scenes in Paris; her
stones are not unacquainted with the taste of human blood; but never
had there been anything like this. The carnage of battle is merciful
compared with it. Shrieking women and children, half-clothed, fleeing
from knives already dripping with human blood; frantic mothers
shielding the bodies of their children, and wives pleading for the
lives of husbands; the living hiding beneath the bodies of the dead.

The cry that ascended to Heaven from Paris that night was the most
awful and despairing in the world's history. It was centuries of
cruelty crowded into a few hours.

The number slain can never be accurately