Quickly the silence of the night was broken by loud cries, shouts of vengeance, the tramp of many feet, the sharp reports of musketry. The work was begun. Every man not marked by a cross was to be slaughtered. The voice of murder broke fearfully upon the peacefulness of the recently quiet midnight hour.
The noise roused Coligny. He rose hastily and threw on his dressing-gown. The cries and shots told him what was going on. He had trusted the faithless Guises and the soulless De' Medici, and this was what came of it.
"M. Merlin," he said to a clergyman who was with him, "say me a prayer; I commit my soul to my Saviour."
Some of his gentlemen entered the room.
"What is the meaning of this riot?" asked Ambrose Paré.
"My lord, it is God calling us," said Cornaton.
"I have long been ready to die," said the admiral; "but you, my friends, save yourselves, if it is still possible."
They left him, and escaped, the most of them by the roof. Only one man stayed with him, Nicholas Muss, a German servant, "as little concerned," says Cornaton, "as if there was nothing going on around him."
The flight had been made barely in time. Hasty footsteps were heard below. The assassins were in the house. In a moment more the chamber door was flung open and two servants of the Duke of Guise entered.
"Art not thou the admiral?" asked one of them, Behme by name.