The Controller-General was all attention, and his neighbor, Madame de Genlis, became absorbed. The stranger still hesitated. Then Beaumarchais exclaimed impetuously:
"Come, proceed, Maître! Do not you know that when the laws leave folks so little liberty, people revenge themselves by laxity of manners?"
So the lawyer went on:
"Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my soul, or that I was prompted by some unknown power, I said to her:
"'Ah, madame, you committed a very great crime.'
"'Which?' she asked in a deep voice.
"'That for which the signal was given by the Palace clock on the 24th of August.'
"She smiled scornfully, and some deep furrows showed on her pallid cheeks.
"'Do you call that a crime?' replied she; 'it was only an accident. The undertaking was badly managed, and the good result we looked for failed—for France, for all Europe, and for the Catholic Church. How could we help it? Our orders were badly carried out. We could not find so many Montlucs as we needed. Posterity will not give us credit for the defective communications which hindered us from giving our work the unity of impulse which is necessary to any great Coup d'État; that was our misfortune. If by the 25th of August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in France, I should have been regarded to the remotest posterity as a noble incarnation of Providence. How often have the clear-seeing spirits of Sixtus V., of Richelieu, of Bossuet, secretly accused me of having failed in my undertaking, after daring to conceive of it! And how many regrets attended my death!
"'The disease was still rife thirty years after that Saint-Bartholomew's night; and it had caused the shedding of ten times more noble blood in France than was left to be shed on August 26, 1572. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for which you had medals struck, cost more tears, more blood and money, and killed more prosperity in France than three Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier, with a dip of ink, carried into effect the decree which the Crown had secretly desired since my day; but though on August 25, 1572, this tremendous execution was necessary, on August 25, 1685, it was useless. Under Henri de Valois' second son heresy was scarcely pregnant; under Henri de Bourbon's second son the teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole world.