Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/157

1572.] THE MASS A CRE OF ST BARTHOL OME W. 137 By seven o'clock the work which Guise and his imme- diate friends had undertaken was finished, with but one failure. The Count Montgomery and the Vidame of Chartres lodged in the Faubourg St Germain, across the water, on the outskirts of the town. A party of assassins had been sent to dispatch them, but had loitered on the way to do some private murdering on their own account. When the news reached Mont- gomery that Paris was up, he supposed, like Coligny, that the Catholics had risen against the Court. He ran down the river's bank with a handful of men behind him, opposite the Tuileries, intending to cross to help his friends ; but the boats were all secured on the other side. The soldiers shot at him from under the palace. It was said it rests only on the worthless authority of Brantome that Charles himself in his frenzy snatched a gun from a servant and fired at him also. Mont- gomery did not wait for further explanation. He, the Yidame, and a few others, sprang on their horses, rode for their lives, and escaped to England. The mob meanwhile was in full enjoyment. Long possessed with the accursed formulas of the priests, they believed that the enemies of God were given into their hands. While dukes and lords were killing at the Louvre, the bands of the sections imitated them with more than success ; men, women, and even children, striving which should be the first in the pious work of murder. All Catholic Paris was at the business, and every Huguenot household had neighbours to know and denounce them. Through street and lane and quay and