A Gentleman from Gascony: A Romance of the Huguenots — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

64 A GENTLEMAN FROM GASCONY. dered how their chief the Duke of Guise could so easily forgive Admiral Coligny, whom he had always accused of instigating the assassination of his father, Duke Francois, were bound to follow as much as possible the example of their superiors. Perhaps there would have been less wonderment anda far less degree of dissatisfaction amidst the rank and file of the Catholic party, could it have had knowledge of a scene which took place that very afternoon in one of the apartments of the Louvre, a scene participated in by King Charles himself, Catherine de Medicis the queen mother, who possessed ten times the courage of her weak and vacillating son, and the Duke of Guise. The king, white with terror,—apprehension, sus- pense, and doubt making him tremble in every limb,— was pacing nervously to and fro. And indeed there was good reason for his discomfort in the astounding and terrible proposition that had just been made to him—nothing less indeed than a whole- sale massacre of the Huguenots. The plot had already been planned in all its details by the Duke de Guise and the queen-mother, and all the arrangements carried out by the duke. Three o’clock in the morning of the feast of St. Bartholomew, when most people would be sleeping in their beds, was the time fixed for the beginning of the slaughter. It was arranged that the signal should be a pistol- shot, to be answered by a note from the deep-throated bell of Saint Germain 1’ Auxerrois. Then, from hiding-places already fixed upon, the soldiers were to spring forth and do their deadly and cowardly work. : Such people who were not Huguenots were to be secretly warned to wear marks of distinction consisting - GEomichbookssco