me to Henry
himself by Muzio, a layman who had gained repute, among other things, by
controversial writings, of which Pius V. said that they had preserved
the faith in whole districts, and who had been charged with the task of
refuting the Centuriators. On the 17th of July 1574, Muzio wrote to the
King that all Italy waited in reliance on his justice and valour, and
besought him to spare neither old nor young, and to regard neither rank
nor ties of blood.[158] These hopes also were doomed to disappointment;
and a Frenchman, writing in the year of Henry's death, laments over the
cruel clemency and inhuman mercy that reigned on St. Bartholomew's
Day.[159]

This was not the general opinion of the Catholic world. In Spain and
Italy, where hearts were hardened and consciences corrupted by the
Inquisition; in Switzerland, where the Catholics lived in suspicion and
dread of their Protestant neighbours; among ecclesiastical princes in
Germany, whose authority waned as fast as their subjects abjured their
faith, the massacre was welcomed as an act of Christian fortitude. But
in France itself the great mass of the people was struck with
consternation.[160] "Which maner of proceedings," writes Walsingham on
the 13th of September, "is by the Catholiques themselves utterly
condemned, who desire to depart hence out of this country, to quit
themselves of this strange kind of government, for that they see here
none can assure themselves of either goods or life." Even in places
still steeped in mourning for the atrocities suffered at the hands of
Huguenots during the civil war, at Nimes, for instance, the King's
orders produced no act of vengeance. At Carcassonne, the ancient seat of
the Inquisition, the Catholics concealed the Protestants in their
houses.[161] In Provence, the news from Lyons and the corpses that came
down in the poisoned waters of the Rhone awakened nothing but horror and
compassion.[162] Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham that in England
"the minds of the most number are much alienated from that nation, even
of the very Papists."[163] At Rome itself Zuniga pronounced the
treachery of which the French were boasting unjustifiable, even in the
case of heretics and rebels;[164] and it was felt as an outrage to
public opinion when the murderer of Coligny was presented to the
Pope.[165] The Emperor was filled with grief and indignation. He said
that the King and Queen-mother would live to learn that nothing could
have b