de Medici. He was an impulsive
youth, restless and vacillating, and was left wholly to the evil
influences of his mother. The first years of his reign were disturbed
by the struggles between the Protestant and Catholic parties in
France. These difficulties were apparently settled in 1569.

"The queen-mother, who was a Catholic, seemed to entertain kind
feelings towards the Protestant leaders. The Protestant King of
Navarre was promised the hand of the king's sister Marguerite, and
marked courtesy and apparent kindness of feeling were shown by the
royal household to many of the leading men of the great Protestant
party. The latter were thus rendered unsuspicious of danger, and
became almost wholly disarmed.

[Illustration: CATHARINE DE MEDICI.]

"But Catharine de Medici, full of craft and wickedness, had resolved
to destroy the Protestant power. She was fully versed in crime, and
the passion for dark deeds grew upon her with years. One day she went
to the boy-king, Charles, and disclosed a plot for the massacre of the
Protestants of France. He listened with a feeling of horror. He had
learned to love the Protestant statesmen, and to call their great
leader, Coligny, 'father.' His young heart recoiled from such a deed.
But his mother gave him no rest. She confided her plot to the Catholic
leaders, who joined hand in hand with her to accomplish the crime.
Church and State united to persuade the young king that the stability
of the throne, the glory of his family, and the advancement of
religious truth demanded the slaughter of the Huguenots, as the
Protestant party were called. Still he hesitated; but after a little
while exhibited his characteristic weakness under the influence of
persuasion, and the conspirators knew his final assent was certain.

"St. Bartholomew's Day was at hand, the time appointed by the Catholic
leaders, the Guises, for the work of death. Paris was full of
Huguenots from the principal provincial cities, who had been drawn
hither by the magnificent wedding of the Protestant King of Navarre.
The preparations for the massacre were nearly complete, but the young
king still hesitated to issue the fatal order.

"His mother now used every art in her power to make him place himself
boldly with the Guises. As he was king, she wished the sanction of a
royal edict to do her bloody work. With this the preparations for the
destruction of the Huguenots would be complete. Her appeals at length
so wrought upo