was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard
shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly
unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons in the
King's name. He seems to have thought that Charles, indulging in one of
his usual mad frolics, had come to punish him as he had punished others,
like schoolboys. He opened the door and fell dead across the threshold,
pierced by a dozen weapons.

When the messenger returned from the Duke of Guise with the answer that
it was "too late," Catherine, fearing that such disobedience to the
royal commands might incense the King and awaken him to a sense of all
the horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately
gave orders to anticipate the hour. Instead of waiting until the matin
bell should ring out from the old clock tower of the Palace of Justice,
she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that
warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower,
rousing all Paris from their slumbers.

Immediately from every quarter of that ancient city uprose a tumult as
of hell. The clanging of bells, the crashing doors, the rush of armed
men, the musket-shots, the shrieks of their victims, and high over all
the yells of the mob, fiercer and more pitiless than hungry wolves--made
such an uproar that the stoutest hearts shrank appalled, and the sanest
appear to have lost their reason. Women unsexed, men wanting but the
strength of the wild beast, children without a single charm of youth or
innocence, crowded the streets where rising day still struggled with
the glare of a thousand torches. They smelt the odor of blood, and,
thirsting to indulge their passions for once with impunity, committed
horrors that have become the marvel of history.

Within the walls of the Louvre, within the hearing of Charles and his
mother, if not actually within their sight, one of the foulest scenes of
this detestable tragedy was enacted. At daybreak, says Queen Margaret of
Navarre, her husband rose to go and play tennis, with a determination
to be present at the King's _lever_, and demand justice for the assault
on the admiral. He left his apartment, accompanied by the Huguenot
gentlemen who had kept watch around him during the night. At the foot
of the stairs he was arrested, while the gentlemen with him were
disarmed, apparently without any attempt at