"Before retiring that night to my inn, I walked through a large number of streets. At least in appearance they were quiet. I met many of our brothers. Alarmed at the attempted murder of the Admiral, several had tried to leave Paris. They found the gates rigorously closed by orders of Charles IX. Back at night in my inn, I did not find the keeper, upon whom I relied for further information. Broken with fatigue and agitated by vague fears, I threw myself in my clothes upon my bed and fell asleep. At about three in the morning I was awakened by my inn-keeper. He was trembling with terror. 'The death of all the Protestants of Paris is decreed,' he whispered to me; 'the massacre is to begin at daybreak. My niece, the chambermaid of the Duchess of Nevers, overheard some words about the plot; she hastened to warn me. I have notified all our brothers who are lodged here. They have all fled. Your only chance to escape the carnage is to join the first gang of the cut-throats whom you may run across; you must pretend to be of them; you may in that way be able to reach some place of safety. For a sign among themselves they have a white paper cross attached to their hats, and a white shirt sleeve slipped like an armlet over the sleeve of their coats. Their password is: "God and the King!" Flee! Flee! May the Lord protect you! Thanks to my niece I have a safe retreat in the palace of Nevers.' While the inn-keeper was giving me these last directions, there came through my window, which I had left open on that hot and sultry night of August, the measured tintinnabulation of the large bell in the tower of the palace. The sound seemed to leap strangely from the depths of the silence in which the city was shrouded. 'It is the signal for the massacre!' cried my inn-keeper, leaving the room precipitately and whispering his last warnings to me: 'Flee! You have not a minute to spare; my house is marked! It will be instantly assaulted by the butchers!'"
"Great God!" cried Theresa, Louis Rennepont's young wife, pressing her child distractedly to her breast, and unable to hold back her tears. And addressing her husband: "You are here, near us, safe and sound, poor friend! and yet I shiver. I weep at the thought of the cruel agonies that you must have undergone. Did you follow the inn-keeper's advice, and assume the signs of the Catholics?"
"It was my only safety. I cut a cross of white paper and stuck it in my hat; I cut off a shirt sleeve and thrust my right arm through it; I then sallied out into the street. It was still silent and deserted. But the funeral knell from all the Paris churches had by that time joined the clangor of the tower bell, which then was ringing at its loudest. Windows were thrown open. Little by little lights appeared in them."
"Malediction upon the people of Paris!" cried Odelin's widow. "It seems most of them were accomplices in the butchery!"
"Alas, yes, mother! To their eternal shame, the fact must be admitted; the people of Paris were the accomplices of Charles IX, and our butchers! The people and a considerable portion of the bourgeoisie, being drugged by the fanaticism of the monks, did take part in the massacre. Some, yielding to the fear of being suspected, obeyed the orders of the provosts, and placed lights at their windows at the sound of the first strokes of the bells that they heard. My first thought was to run to the residence of the Admiral and notify him of the projected butchery. As I entered Bethisy Street I saw men emerging from several houses; all carried white crosses in their hats and their arms in shirt sleeves. They brandished pikes, swords and cutlasses, and cried: 'God and the King! Kill! Kill all the Huguenots!' They then gathered into groups, drew themselves up before certain doors that bore the mark of a cross in white chalk, beat upon and broke them down, and rushed in yelling: 'Kill! Kill the Huguenots!'
"I was rushing towards the residence of the Admiral when I saw a battalion of Arquebusiers of the Guard turn into Bethisy Street. The troop was headed by the young Duke Henry of Guise, accompanied by his uncle Aumale and the Bastard of Angouleme, brother of Charles IX. All three were clad in war armor. Pages carrying lighted torches preceded them. Among the soldiers were interspersed a large number of Catholic cut-throats, recognizable by the signs which I also wore. I mixed with them. The crowd arrived before Coligny's residence. The soldiers knocked at the main door with the butts of their arquebuses. It was instantly opened. Despite the prompt obedience shown, all the serving-men of Coligny found in the corridor and the yard were promptly done to death. The Guises and the Bastard of Angouleme, surrounded by their pages, remained outside in front of the facade of the house at the foot of the porch, the stairs of which led to the vestibule. Duke Henry of Guise made a sign; instantly his equerry Besmes, followed by Captains Cosseins, Cardillac, Altain and Petrucci, rushed forward with a detachment of soldiers and dashed up the stairs to the first floor, on which the Admiral's room was. I realized the Admiral was lost, and remained unobserved below among the Catholics, where the details of the murder were soon reported. Awakened by the outcry of his servants, and the tumult on the street, the Admiral guessed the fate that awaited him. His faithful Nicholas Mouche and Pastor Merlin were with him. They had watched all night at his bedside. 'Our hour has come; let us commend our souls to God!' said Coligny, with which words he rose from his bed, threw a morning gown over his shoulders and knelt down. The minister and his old servant knelt down beside him. The three began to pray. The door was broken in. Besmes, the equerry of Henry of Guise, was the first to enter, sword in hand, leading in his captains. He walked straight to Coligny, who, having finished his prayer was rising from the floor serene and dignified. 'Is it you who are the Admiral?' shouted Besmes; 'Well, you shall die!' 'The will of God be done! Young man, you shorten my life only a few days,' answered Coligny. These were that great man's last words. Besmes seized him by the throat with one hand, and with the other thrust his sword through him. The old man sank on his knees. Captain Cardillac threw him down, and opened his throat with one slash of his dagger. The other officers despatched Merlin and Nicholas Mouche.
"I had remained below. There I witnessed an even more execrable scene. Only a minute or two after the murderers had rushed upstairs, the Duke of Guise stepped closer to the facade of the house and called out impatiently in a ringing voice: 'Well, Besmes! Is it done?' Thereupon a casement was thrown open on the first floor; the equerry appeared at the window holding his bloody sword in his hand, and answered: 'Yes, monseigneur! It is done! He is dead!' 'Then throw the corpse down to us that we may see it!' commanded Henry of Guise. Besmes vanished, and reappeared dragging, with the aid of Captain Cosseins, the corpse of Admiral Coligny; the two raised it—meseems I still behold the grey head of the venerable old man, pale and limp, as the body was pushed out of the window, with his lifeless arms swinging in space. Besmes and the captain made a final effort; the corpse was precipitated upon the pavement, where it rolled down at the feet of the Duke of Guise. Coligny was clad only in the morning gown that he had hurriedly put on. Thus half-naked and still warm he was hurled out of the window. The venerable head rebounded upon the cobblestones and reddened them with blood. The victim had fallen on his face. The Duke of Guise stooped down, and, aided by the Bastard of Angouleme, turned the corpse over on its back, wiped with his sash the blood that covered the Admiral's august visage, contemplated it for a moment with ferocious glee, and then kicked the white head with the tip of his boot, crying: 'At last! Dead at last—thoroughly dead!' The Duke then turned to his henchmen: 'Comrades, let us proceed with our work! The Pope wills it! the King so orders it!' Almost fainting with sickening horror and unable to move, I witnessed this cannibal scene—it was only the prelude for another and still more horrifying one. The Dukes of Guise and of Aumale and the Bastard of Angouleme departed with their soldiers from Monsieur Coligny's courtyard. Almost immediately the same was invaded by a band of men, women and children in rags. They were a troop hideous to look upon, as they brandished their sticks, butcher knives and iron bars, under the leadership of a Cordelier monk who held a jagged cutlass in one hand and a crucifix in the other, yelling at the top of his voice: 'God and the King!' The howlings of the mob kept time to the monk's yells. Two men with hang-dog looks carried torches before the monk. The moment that he recognized the corpse of our martyr, the Cordelier emitted a screech of infernal glee, threw himself upon the lifeless body of the Admiral, squatted down upon its chest, sawed at the neck with his cutlass, severed the head from the trunk, seized it by its grey locks, and held it up to the mob, crying in a resonant, though cracked voice: 'This is the share of the Holy Father! I shall send him Coligny's head to Rome!'[77]—That monk," added Louis Rennepont in a tremulous voice, and answering a cry of execration that leaped from the hearts of his listeners, "that monk, O shame and O misfortune!—that monk was the assassin of Odelin! Oh, may God have pity upon us!"
"Fra Hervé!" exclaimed all the members of the Lebrenn family in chorus. A silence of terror and horror reigned in the armorer's hall.
"I wish to come quickly to an end with these monstrosities," proceeded Louis Rennepont, catching his voice. "After the tiger come the jackals, after the ferocious beasts the unclean ones. Hardly had Fra Hervé severed the Admiral's head from his trunk, amid the hideous acclamations of the ragged crew, when they fell upon the corpse. Its feet and hands were cut off. The entrails were torn out of the abdomen and were struggled for by the human jackals. The sacrilegious mutilations seemed to go beyond the boundaries of the horrible, and yet the limit was not reached. Women, veritable furies, pounced upon the bleeding limbs, and—but I dare say no more before mother, or before Cornelia, nor before you, my wife. The stentorian voice of Fra Hervé finally silenced the tumult and quelled the anthropophagous orgie. 'Brothers!' he cried, 'to the Pope I shall send the head of this Huguenot carrion, but let us carry the stripped carcass to the gibbet of Montfaucon! It is there that should be exposed the remains of the villain who has infested France with his heresy, and lacerated the bosom of our holy mother the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church!' 'To Montfaucon with the Huguenot carrion!' howled the ferocious band. A procession was improvised. Fra Hervé sheathed his cutlass, planted the Admiral's head on the point of a pike, and raised the trophy in one hand. In the other he waved aloft his crucifix, and, lighted by his two torch-bearers, headed the procession. The now shapeless remnants of the corpse were tied to a rope, a team of cut-throats harnessed to it, and the bloody lump was dragged through the gutters. The procession marched to the cry of 'To Montfaucon with the Huguenot carrion! God and the King!' At that moment, and despite the terror that held me rooted to the ground, my inn-keeper's last suggestions occurred to me. Montfaucon was situated outside of the walls of Paris. No doubt some city gate would be opened to the Cordelier's band. I joined it, in the hope of escaping from Paris. We left the courtyard of Monsieur Coligny's house. It was now broad day. Before proceeding to Montfaucon, Fra Hervé wished to exhibit his bloody trophy to the eyes of Charles IX and his mother. We directed our course to the Louvre. Other scenes of carnage were taking place there. The Protestant seigneurs and officers who came in the suite of the Princes of Bearn and Condé to participate in the wedding festivities of the King's sister, were lodged at the palace. Relying upon the royal hospitality, they were taken by surprise while asleep, dragged half naked to the courtyard, and there either brained or stabbed to death. Among others whom I recognized at a distance were Morge, Pardillan, St. Martin, besides the brave veterans Piles, Baudine and Puy-Vaud. They struggled in their shirts against the soldiers who beat them down with their halberds, and then stripped the corpses of their last shreds of clothing. The moanings, the imprecations of the victims, the streams of steaming blood through which we tramped, and that often reached our ankles, made my head reel. The butchers laid the corpses out in rows in front of the facade of the Louvre. The bodies were yet warm; many a bloody limb still seemed to palpitate; the corpses lay stripped naked, upon their backs. I counted over four hundred. Suddenly there appeared Catherine De Medici accompanied by her maids of honor and other ladies of the court. She mounted a terrace from which a full sight of the carnage could be had. They came—"
Louis Rennepont stopped short. He hid his face in his hands. "Alas! I have to inform you of something still more horrible than anything I have yet said! The furies who profaned the corpse of Coligny were beings, who, depraved by misery and ignorance, and besotted by a brutish paganism, yielded obedience to fanatic promptings. But Catherine De Medici and the women of her suite were brought up in the splendors of court life, and yet they came to mock and insult the bodies of the dead. And would you believe it—" but again Louis Rennepont found it impossible to proceed. "No!" he cried; "I shall not soil your ears with the nameless infamies of those worse than harpies.[78] While Catherine De Medici, her maids of honor and a bevy of court ladies were amusing themselves on the terrace, Fra Hervé, still carrying Coligny's head on the point of the pike, addressed to the Queen a few words that I did not hear, my attention being at that moment diverted by the appearance of Charles IX at the balcony of one of the windows of the Louvre. The King held a long arquebus in his hand; a page carried another of identical shape and stood behind his master ready to pass it over to him. Suddenly I saw the King lower the arm, take aim, blow upon the fuse on the cock, approach it to the pan—and the shot departed. Charles IX raised his arquebus, looked into the distance, and started to laugh—pleased as a hunter who has brought down his game. The monster with a human face was firing upon the Huguenots who were fleeing from the butchery in the St. Germain quarter, and were attempting to escape death by swimming across the Seine.