"Provided," he had said, "that not a single one is left to reproach me." The massacre had been accomplished almost without any resistance but that offered by certain governors of provinces or towns, who had refused to take part in it.

The chief leader of French Protestantism, Coligny, had been the first victim.
Far more than that, the Parliament of Paris had accepted the royal lie which accused Coligny of conspiring for the downfall of the king and the royal house; a decree, on that very ground, sentenced to condemnation the memory, the family, and the property of Coligny, with all sorts of rigorous, we should rather say atrocious, circumstances.

And after having succeeded so well against the Protestants, Charles IX.

saw them recovering again, renewing the struggle with him, and wresting from him such concessions as he had never yet made to them.

More than ever might he exclaim, "Then I shall never have rest!" The news that came to him from abroad was not more calculated to satisfy him.
[Illustration: The St.Bartholomew----383] The St.Bartholomew had struck Europe with surprise and horror; not only amongst the princes and in the countries that were Protestant, in England, Scotland, and Northern Europe, but in Catholic Germany itself, there was a very strong feeling of reprobation; the Emperor Maximilian II.