rom
Paris.[113] He reports that the King had positively commanded that not
one Huguenot should escape, and was overjoyed at the accomplishment of
his orders. He believes the thing to have been premeditated, and
inspired by Divine justice. The other tract is remarkable because it
strives to reconcile the pretended conspiracy with the hypothesis of
premeditation.[114] There were two plots which went parallel for months.
The King knew that Coligny was compassing his death, and deceived him by
feigning to enter into his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries;
and Coligny, allowing himself to be overreached, summoned his friends to
Paris, for the purpose of killing Charles, on the 23rd of August. The
writer expects that there will soon be no Huguenots in France. Capilupi
at first borrowed several of his facts, which he afterwards corrected.

The real particulars relative to the marriage are set forth minutely in
the correspondence of Ferralz; and they absolutely contradict the
supposition of the complicity of Rome.[115] It was celebrated in
flagrant defiance of the Pope, who persisted in refusing the
dispensation, and therefore acted in a way which could only serve to
mar the plot. The accusation has been kept alive by his conduct after
the event. The Jesuit who wrote his life by desire of his son, says that
Gregory thanked God in private, but that in public he gave signs of a
tempered joy.[116] But the illuminations and processions, the singing of
Te Deum and the firing of the castle guns, the jubilee, the medal, and
the paintings whose faded colours still vividly preserve to our age the
passions of that day, nearly exhaust the modes by which a Pope could
manifest delight.

Charles IX. and Salviati both wrote to Rome on St. Bartholomew's Day;
and the ambassador's nephew, Beauville, set off with the tidings. They
were known before he arrived. On the 27th, Mandelot's secretary
despatched a secret messenger from Lyons with orders to inform the Pope
that the Huguenot leaders were slain, and that their adherents were to
be secured all over France. The messenger reached Rome on the 2nd of
September, and was immediately carried to the Pope by the Cardinal of
Lorraine. Gregory rewarded him for the welcome intelligence with a
present of a hundred crowns, and desired that Rome should be at once
illuminated. This was prevented by Ferralz, who tried the patience of
the Romans by declining their congratulations as long as he was no