"Young man," answered Coligny, "thou comest against a wounded and aged man. Thou'lt not shorten my life by much."
Behme's answer was to plunge a heavy boar-spear which he held into the body of the defenceless veteran. Withdrawing it, he struck him on the head with it. Coligny fell, saying,—
"If it were but a man! But it is a horse-boy."
Others rushed into the room and thrust their weapons into the dying man.
"Behme," cried the duke of Guise from the court-yard, "hast thou done?"
"It is all over, my lord," answered the assassin.
The murderers flung the body from the window. It fell with a crash at the feet of Guise and his companions. They turned it over, wiped the blood from the face, and said,—
"Faith, it is he, sure enough!"
Some say that Guise kicked the bleeding corpse in the face.
Meanwhile, murder was everywhere. The savage lower orders of Paris, all, high and low, of the party of the Guises, were infected with the thirst for blood, and the streets of the city became a horrible whirlpool of slaughter, all who did not wear the saving cross being shot down without mercy or discrimination.