ter a long and
gallant defence, was finally put to death under the queen-mother's
windows. The ladies of the court, from a savage and horrible curiosity,
went to view his naked body, disfigured and bloody.

"An Italian first cut off _Coligni's_ head, which was presented to
_Catherine of Medicis_. The populace then exhausted all their brutal and
unrestrained fury on the trunk. They cut off the hands, after which it
was left on a dunghill; in the afternoon they took it up again, dragged
it three days in the dirt, then on the banks of the _Seine_, and lastly
carried it to _Montfaucon_ (an eminence between the _Fauxbourg St.
Martin_ and the _Temple_, on which they erected a gallows.) It was here
hung by the feet with an iron chain, and a fire lighted under it, with
which it was half roasted. In this situation the King and several of the
courtiers went to survey it. These remains were at length taken down
privately in the night, and interred at _Chantilly_."

"During seven days the massacre did not cease, though its extreme fury
spent itself in the two first."

"Every enormity, every profanation, every atrocious crime, which zeal,
revenge, and cruel policy are capable of influencing mankind to commit,
stain the dreadful registers of this unhappy period. More than five
thousand persons of all ranks perished by various species of deaths. The
_Seine_ was loaded with carcases floating on it, and _Charles_ fed his
eyes from the windows of the _Louvre_, with this unnatural and
abominable spectacle of horror. A butcher who entered the palace during
the heat of the massacre, boasted to his sovereign, baring his bloody
arm, that he himself had dispatched an hundred and fifty."

"_Catherine of Medicis_, the presiding demon, who scattered destruction
in so many shapes, was not melted into pity at the view of such
complicated and extensive misery; she gazed with savage satisfaction on
the head of _Coligni_ which was brought her."

_Sully_ only slightly mentions this massacre of which he was
notwithstanding an eye-witness, because he was but twelve years of age.

_Mezeray_ gives the most circumstantial account of it; he says, "The
streets were paved with dead or dying bodies, the _portes-cocheres_,
(great gates of the hotels) were stopped up with them, there were heaps
of them in the public squares, the street-kennels overflowed with
blood, which ran gushing into the river. Six hundred houses were
pillaged at different times, and f