"After haranguing Catherine De Medici, Fra Hervé resumed his march to Montfaucon at the head of his band, dragging behind them the now shapeless remains of the Admiral. I had to cross Paris almost from one end to the other in the wake of Fra Hervé's procession. In the course of the march my eyes encountered fresh horrors. We ran across Marshal Tavannes, the commander of the royal army at the battle of Roche-la-Belle. At the head of a regiment of the guards he was urging his men and the mobs to massacre, shouting to them: 'Kill! Bleed them! Bleed them! A bleeding is good in August as well as in May!' And his men did the bleeding. They bled so well that the gutters ran no longer water but blood. The smoldering hatreds of neighbors against neighbors were now given a loose to, under the pretext of religious fervor. Among a thousand atrocities that I witnessed on that frightful day, I shall mention but one, because it exceeds any other that I have yet mentioned. When I first arrived in Paris, and despite the apprehensions that were uppermost on my mind, I often went to the lectures of the illustrious scientist Remus. The man's renown, he being one of the most celebrated professors at the University, besides enjoying the reputation of a foremost philanthropist of these days, attracted me. I found students, grown-up men and even greyheads crowding around his chair. Well, holding close to Fra Hervé's band, I passed by the house of Remus, which the cut-throats had invaded. A large concourse of people blocked our way, and interrupted our march for awhile. The mob clamored aloud for the life of the celebrated scientist. The most frantic in their cries for the murder were a bunch of pupils, between fourteen and fifteen years of age, whom two monks—a Carmelite and a Dominican—had in lead. The assassins finally pushed Remus, half naked, out of his house. The unhappy man, already wounded in many places, and blinded by the blood that streamed down his face, staggered like a drunken man, and held his hands before him. I see him yet—he falls to the ground, they despatch him, and thereupon the pupils, boys yet, throw themselves upon the corpse of the scientist, rip his bowels open, tear out the steaming entrails, turn the body around, raise the bloody shirt that barely covered it, and thrash the corpse with its own intestines amid roars of laughter, while they shout: 'Remus has whipped enough of us, it is now our turn to whip him.'
"Fra Hervé's band again resumed its march. It arrived at one of the city gates that leads to the gibbet of Montfaucon. As I had hoped, the gate was thrown open before the Cordelier. I slackened my pace, fell to the rear of the procession, and, at the first practicable turn on the road, I jumped aside and blotted myself out of sight in a wheat field. The tall stalks concealed me completely. I waited till Fra Hervé's band was a safe distance away. I crept to the road that encircles the ramparts and towards sunset I arrived, worn out with fatigue, at an inn where I spent the night, giving myself out for a good Catholic. Early in the morning I started for Etampes. They had just finished the carnage when I arrived! It was still going on in Orleans when I passed that city. At Blois, at Angers, at Poitiers—the same massacres of our brothers. Thus, after long years of hypocrisy and craftiness, the pact of the triumvirate inspired by Francis of Guise, the butcher of Vassy, was finally carried out. Oh, my friends! Not for nothing did Catherine De Medici say to the Jesuit Lefevre: 'Induce the Holy Father and Philip II to be patient; let us lull the reformers with a false sense of safety; I shall hatch the bloody egg that the Guise laid—on one day, at the same hour, the Huguenots will be exterminated in France.' The Italian woman kept her promise. The shell of the egg, nursed in her bosom, has broken, and the extermination has leaped out full armed."
Odelin's widow rose to her feet pale and stately. She raised one of her venerable hands to heaven, and with a gesture of malediction she uttered these words, solemnly, amidst the profound silence of her family:
"Be they eternally accursed of God and man, who, from this day or in the centuries to come, do not repudiate the Church of Rome, that infamous Church, the only Church that has ever given birth to such misdeeds!"
"By my sister's death!" cried the Franc-Taupin. "Shall the voice of Estienne of La Boetie be hearkened to at last? Shall we at last see all leagued against one? the oppressed, the artisans, the plebs, finally annihilate the oppressor and crush royalty?"
Hardly had the Franc-Taupin finished speaking when James Henry, the Mayor of La Rochelle, entered precipitately, and addressing Louis Rennepont, said: "My friend, the few words dropped by you to some of the people whom you met on your arrival, have flown from mouth to mouth and thrown the city into a state of alarm! Is it true that Monsieur Coligny has been assassinated?"
"Monsieur Coligny has been assassinated! All the Protestant leaders are murdered!" answered Louis Rennepont. "All the Protestants of Paris were massacred on St. Bartholomew's night! At Etampes, at Orleans, at Blois, at Tours, at Poitiers, the work of extermination is still in progress. It was expected to steep in blood the rest of France as well. It is a fact!"
"To arms! And may the Lord protect us!" shouted James Henry vigorously. "Let us make ready for a desperate defense. La Rochelle is now the only safe city left to the Huguenots. Charles IX will not be long in laying siege to us. I shall order the belfry to ring. The City Council shall be in session within an hour. It shall proclaim La Rochelle in a state of danger. To arms! War to the knife against the King and his Catholics, against the assassins of our brothers! To arms!"
CHAPTER IX.
THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE.
For the first time in their lives did Charles IX, his mother and her priests discover that there was a limit to endurance. The crime so long elaborated, so skilfully planned, and carried out with incredible audacity, so far from annihilating the Reformation gave it fresh life, steeled its nerves, and rendered it unconquerable. Hardly had two months elapsed since the massacres of St. Bartholomew, when, not Huguenots only, but a considerable portion of the Catholic party itself, in open revolt at the cruel excesses of the court, the fanaticism of the papacy and the subjection of France to the exactions of Philip II, took up arms, and made common cause with the Huguenots in order to bring about the triumph not only of the religious but of a political reformation also. The new adversaries of Charles IX and his mother took the name of the "Politicals." Alarmed at the renewed and more threatening attitude of the now so unexpectedly reinforced Huguenots, the King endeavored once more to beguile them with false promises. He doubled and twisted, sought to deal and compromise. It was too late. A fourth religious war broke out. Several provinces federated together upon a republican plan. La Rochelle became the fortified center of the Protestants. Against that city Charles IX concentrated and directed all his forces in the course of the last month of the year 1572—less than six months after St. Bartholomew's night.