So we went back to our original determination, and let ourselves follow the thread and the course of the enterprise." The enterprise, in fact, followed its thread and natural course without its being in the power of anybody to arrest or direct it.

It had been absolutely necessary to give information of it the evening before to the provost of tradesmen of Paris, Le Charron, president in the court of taxation (Board of Excise), and to the chief men of the city.

According to Brantome, "they made great difficulties and imported conscience into the matter; but M.de Tavannes, in the king's presence, rebuked them strongly, and threatened them that, if they did not make themselves busy, the king would have them hanged.

The poor devils, unable to do aught else, thereupon answered, 'Ha! is that the way you take it, sir, and you, monsieur?
We swear to you that you shall hear news thereof, for we will ply our hands so well right and left that the memory shall abide forever of a right well kept St.Bartholomew.'" "Wherein they did not fail," continues Brantome, "but they did not like it at first." According to other reports, the first opposition of the provost of tradesmen, Le Charron, was not without effect; it was not till the next day that he let the orders he had received take their course; and it was necessary to apply to his predecessor in his office, the ex-provost Marcel, a creature of the queen-mother's, to set in motion the turbulent and the fanatical amongst the populace, "which it never does to 'blood,' for it is afterwards more savage than is desirable." Once let loose upon the St.Bartholomew, the Parisian populace was eager indeed, but not alone in its eagerness, for the work of massacre; the gentlemen of the court took part in it passionately, from a spirit of vengeance, from religious hatred, from the effect of smelling blood, from covetousness at the prospect of confiscations at hand.

Teligny, the admiral's son-in-law, had taken refuge on a roof; the Duke of Anjou's guards make him a mark for their arquebuses.