"The same in France. For good and just reasons all the heretics, without distinction, must be massacred at one blow. The peace shall be put to that use. And this mission of exterminating all the members of the new religion shall be entrusted to the Duke of Guise, who shall, moreover, be charged with entirely effacing the name and stock of the lineage of the Navarrian Bourbons, lest from them there may arise some one to undertake the revenge of these acts, or the restoration of the new religion. All these matters are to be kept in mind.
"Matters being thus disposed of in France, it will be well to invade Protestant Germany with the aid of the Emperor and the bishops, and to restore that country to the holy apostolic See. To this end, the Duke of Guise shall lend the Emperor and other Catholic Princes all the moneys proceeding from the confiscations and spoils of so many nobles and rich bourgeois, KILLED in France as HERETICS. The Duke of Guise shall be later reimbursed from the spoils of the Lutherans, who, by reason of the same taint of heresy shall have been killed in Germany.
"The Cardinals of the Sacred College have no doubt that, in the same manner, all the other kingdoms can be turned into the flocks of the apostolic shepherd. But, first of all, may it please God to help and favor these purposes, they being HOLY AND FULL OF PIETY."[65]
"Holy and full of piety were these Catholic purposes!" exclaimed the reverend Father Lefevre laying the pact of the triumvirate upon the table. "Alas, death palsied the hand of the Duke of Guise at the very beginning of his great work!"
"The Lord evidently wished, my reverend Father, to reserve for us, the Valois, the execution of the project that the Guisard organized with a motive of purely personal ambition. I shall hatch the bloody egg that the Lorrainian laid. But the chick can not break the egg except during peace. Then the Huguenots will have ceased to be on their guard; then they will be dozing in false security. The work of extermination will be accomplished with the help of a peace that we shall have brought about. All will be killed—men and women, children and the aged. Not one heretic will escape the avenging sword. Let Rome and Madrid give me time to move! Let Pius V and Philip II give over harassing me continually with their threats on the ground that the war is dragging along! Are hostilities to be suddenly stopped? No, indeed! I must profit, as I have already profited, by all opportunities to destroy as many Huguenots as possible, especially their leaders. The Duke of Alva is right: 'One salmon is worth more than a thousand minnows.' At the first favorable juncture I shall negotiate peace with the Protestants, and grant them all they may demand. The more favorable the treaty shall be to the Huguenots, all the smoother will the rope run that is to strangle them. When the edict is promulgated it shall be scrupulously carried out, in order to induce our adversaries to disarm. At the right moment we shall organize the general massacre, for one day, all over France."
"The Holy Father and the King of Spain shall be posted on your Majesty's project. They will be notified that it is thanks to you, the Duke of Deux-Ponts, Dandelot and the Prince of Condé have been dismissed to appear before their natural Judge."
"People of your cloth, my reverend Father," replied the Queen, "know how to impart an ingenious and peculiar turn to the description of events."
"Madam, seeing we are considering those people in whose behalf we simply advance the hour of final judgment, I wish above all to recommend to the attention of your Majesty that most dangerous German Prince—Franz of Gerolstein."
"The young Prince came last year to my court shortly before the reformers took up arms. He is brilliant, daring and gifted with great military talent. It was due to his influence that the Duke of Deux-Ponts decided to bring to the Protestant army the reinforcement it received of German troops. To-day Franz of Gerolstein is the real head of the forces over which Wolfgang of Mansfeld exercises but titular authority."
"Do you expect to deliver the Church of that pestilential Gerolstein?"