"But General Godin was presently superseded in his command and shortly after dismissed the service. Two plain indications that the sympathy of the government was with the assassins and not at all with their intended victims."
"But is it true, sir?" asked Max.
"Yes; it is true that at that time, in those valleys, and under those circumstances, such a plot was hatched and its carrying out prevented in the exact way that this story relates."
"Mean, cowardly, wicked fellows they must have been to want to murder the wives and children and burn and plunder the houses of the men that were defending them and theirs from a common enemy!" exclaimed the boy, his face flushing and eyes flashing with righteous indignation.
"Very true; but such are the lessons popery teaches and always has taught; 'no faith with heretics,' no mercy to any who deny her dogmas; and that anything is right and commendable which is done to destroy those who do not acknowledge her authority and to increase her power; one of her doctrines being that the end sanctifies the means!"
"But what did they mean when they said they were going to have a second
St. Bartholomew in the valleys?" asked Grace.
"Did you never hear of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, daughter?" her father asked, stroking her hair caressingly as she sat upon his knee.
"No, papa; won't you tell me about it?"
"It occurred in France a little more than three hundred years ago; it was a dreadful massacre of the Protestants to the number of from sixty to a hundred thousand; and it was begun on the night of the twenty-third of August; which the Papists call St. Bartholomew's Day.
"The Protestants were shot, stabbed, murdered in various ways, in their beds, in the street, any where that they could be found; and for no crime but being Protestants."