The same thing was practised at supper; and perceiving that all his household could not without inconvenience be present in the evening at bedtime, he ordered that every one should come at the conclusion of supper, and that when the psalms had been sung, prayers should be said. And it would not be easy to say how many of the French nobility began to establish in their families this devout rule of the Admiral, who often exhorted them to the true practice of piety, saying that it was not enough that the father of a family lived holily and religiously, if he did not by his example induce others to follow the same rule.
“When it was near the time of supper, he summoned all his people, representing to them that he would not have to render to God an account of his own life only, but also of their conduct, and he reconciled them together, if there had happened to be any dissension among them.”
“He was of the middle height, his limbs were well-proportioned, his countenance calm and serene, his voice soft and pleasing, but rather slow and hesitating, his complexion clear, his carriage and demeanour grave, yet full of grace and kindness. Of wine, he drank very little; he ate sparingly, and slept, at the most, but seven hours.”[32]
The character that Gaspard de Coligny displayed in public affairs, is familiar to all. Endowed with qualities the most diverse, and of the highest order, severe toward himself indulgent to others, never inflated by prosperity nor cast down by misfortune, a lover of his country, devoted to his king in whatever did not contravene his conscience, the most illustrious statesmen, as well as the most able captains, have esteemed it an honour to be compared with him. Perhaps he had defects in these qualities. He appeared to be sometimes wanting in resolution, because he was too loyal to pursue to the utmost his advantages against royalty, and to be sometimes wanting in foresight, because he suspected with difficulty in others that perfidy which he found not in his own heart.
If we search in times near our own, and in a different system of things, for a parallel character with his, we shall, doubtless, pronounce the name of General Lafayette. The man of the sixteenth century and he of the eighteenth had a full belief in the justice of their cause. Each made the most generous sacrifices to it, and to the end adhered to it with the most unshaken constancy. Both had in their hands, on many occasions, the greatest interests of the state. Both were held to be the most honourable persons of their age. But Lafayette had the popular masses with him; Coligny had against him three-fourths of France; and also, with a higher political and military genius, he had less success.
The third brother, Odet de Châtillon, was the eldest of the family. Made by Clement VII. a cardinal at seventeen, he demanded reforms without completely adopting the Reformation. He ended by marrying a lady of a noble house, Isabelle de Hauteville, who was styled Madame la Cardinal, or Madame la Comtesse de Beauvais, when she took her seat in the apartments of the court in the quality of wife of a peer of France: a curious singularity, even in that time! Odet de Châtillon died in England some years after, being poisoned by one of his servants. Brantôme and De Thou speak in high terms of his judgment and integrity.
XI.
Catherine de Medicis had expressed in her days of disappointment some sentiments favourable to the Reformation, and those of the (new) religion supposed at first that she would lend them her support with her son Francis II. Coligny and other Calvinist lords wrote to her that they hoped to find in her a second Esther. But her favourable disposition was only apparent. “I comprehend nothing of this doctrine,” she would say; “what enlisted my sympathy for them, was rather my woman’s pity and compassion than a desire to be informed if their doctrine were true or false.”
In concert with the queen-mother and the court of Madrid, the Guises held the Bourbons in the background, and sent forth new edicts for exterminating heretics. In each Parliament chambres ardentes were instituted, so called because they condemned to the fire without pity, all those who were accused of the crime of heresy. There was a vast system of terror, where even the shadow of justice no longer appeared. Delations, confiscations, pillages, sentences of death, atrocious executions—the same scenes affrighted in the beginning of 1560, the principal towns of France,—Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyons, Grenoble, Poitiers, and their dependent provinces.
At Paris, the commissaries of the quarters made daily visits to the suspected houses. One Démochères, or Mouchy, who has given the French language the term of mouchard (spy), took the field with a band of wretches, whose object was to surprise the heretics eating meat on the prohibited days, or assembling in meetings. They kept particular watch on the Faubourg Saint Germain, which at that time received the name of Little Geneva.