Shrieking women and children, half-clothed, fleeing from knives already dripping with human blood; frantic mothers shielding the bodies of their children, and wives pleading for the lives of husbands; the living hiding beneath the bodies of the dead.
The cry that ascended to Heaven from Paris that night was the most awful and despairing in the world's history.

It was centuries of cruelty crowded into a few hours.
The number slain can never be accurately stated, but it was thousands.
Human blood is intoxicating.

An orgy set in which laughed at orders to cease.

Seven days it continued, and then died out for lack of material.

The provinces had caught the contagion, and orders to slay were received and obeyed in all except two, the Governor of Bayonne, to his honor be it told, writing to the king in reply: "Your Majesty has many faithful subjects in Bayonne, but not one executioner." And where was "his Majesty" while this work was being done?
How was it with Catharine?
We hear of no regrets, no misgivings; that she was calm, collected, suave, and unfathomable as ever; but that Charles, in a strange, half-frenzied state, was amusing himself by firing from the windows of the palace at the fleeing Huguenots.