A Gentleman from Gascony: A Romance of the Huguenots — page 67: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VI. A DANGEROUS GAME, THERE was a brilliant féte in progress at the Louvre, the culmination of all the festivities in honor of the royal marriage. On this eve of the Feast of St. Bartholomew, the count- less windows of the historic palace were brilliantly illuminated. The neighboring streets, usuaily so quiet after the bell of the church of Saint Germain 1’ Auxer- trois had sounded the hour of nine, were now filled with a jostling, tumultuous crowd, through which the coach- men and link-boys found difficulty in forcing their way. It seemed as if the residents of Paris and the thousands of Huguenot visitors with which the fair city was thronged from end to end were bent this evening on making the Louvre their objective point. There was much scope for wondering reflection in the sight of the leaders of the two parties, who had so lately been at one another’s throats, now entering the palace side by side in apparent amity. The rabble on both sides were not so ready to bury the hatchet, as the sharp words that passed here and there in the crowd abundantly testified. There was little recourse to any- thing more than words, however, as the Huguenots were too genuinely rejoiced at what looked like the dawning of a new era and the end of persecution to care to precipi- tate fresh dissensions, and the Catholics, although the majority of them were secretly dissatisfied and won- Comichoo S (co LAA =