[955] Mémoires de l'estat, ubi supra, 98.
[956] Damville, Méru and Thoré, were sons of the constable. Their eldest brother, Marshal Francis de Montmorency, whose greatest vice was his sluggishness and his devotion to his ease, had left Paris a few days before, on the pretext of going to the chase. His absence at the time of the massacre was supposed to have saved not only his life, but that of his brothers. The Guises would gladly have destroyed a family whose influence and superior antiquity had for a generation been obnoxious to their ambitious designs; but it was too hazardous to leave the head of the family to avenge his murdered brothers.
[957] There was no need of going far, Coligny responded, to discover the author. "Qu'on en demande à Monsieur de Guise, il dira qui est celuy qui m'a presté une telle charité; mais Dieu ne me soit jamais en aide si je demande vengeance d'un tel outrage." Mém. de l'estat, ubi supra, 104, 105.
[958] Gasparis Colinii Vita, 114-121; Mémoires de l'estat, ubi supra, 102-106. The two accounts agree almost word for word. There is a briefer narrative in Reveille-Matin, 178, 179; and Euseb. Philad. Dialogi, i. 37.
[959] Discours du roy Henry III., ubi supra, 502-505.
[960] Le roi à Mandelot, 22 août, Correspondance du roi Charles IX. et du sieur de Mandelot (Paris, 1830), 36, 37.
[961] Corresp. dipl. de La Mothe Fénélon, vii. 322, 323.
[962] Mémoires de l'estat, ubi supra, 106, 107.
[963] Ibid., 108.
[964] There is here, however, a direct contradiction, which I shall not attempt to reconcile, between the account of Henry and that of the younger Tavannes, who represents Retz as one of the most violent in his recommendations. According to Tavannes, it was his father, Marshal Tavannes, that advocated moderation. In other respects the two accounts are strongly corroborative of each other.