They of the Guises reserved the chief of them, after dinner, to make sport for the ladies; the two sexes were ranged at the windows of the castle, as if it were a question of seeing some mummery played.

And what is worse, the king and his young brothers were present at these spectacles, as if the desire were to 'blood' them; the sufferers were pointed out to them by the Cardinal of Lorraine with all the signs of a man greatly rejoiced, and when the poor wretches died with more than usual firmness, he would say, 'See, sir, what brazenness and madness; the fear of death cannot abate their pride and felonry.

What would they do, then, if they had you in their clutches ?'" It was too much vengeance to take and too much punishment to inflict for a danger so short-lived and so strictly personal.

So hideous was the spectacle that the Duchess of Guise, Anne d'Este, daughter of Renee of France, Duchess of Ferrara, took her departure one day, saying, as she did so, to Catherine de' Medici, "Ah! madame, what a whirlwind of hatred is gathering about the heads of my poor children!" There was, throughout a considerable portion of the country, a profound feeling of indignation against the Guises.

One of their victims, Villemongey, just as it came to his turn to die, plunged his hands into his comrades' blood, saying, "Heavenly Father, this is the blood of Thy children: Thou wilt avenge it!" John d'Aubigne, a nobleman of Saintonge, as he passed through Amboise one market-day with his son, a little boy eight years old, stopped before the heads fixed upon the posts, and said to the child, "My boy, spare not thy head, after mine, to avenge these brave chiefs; if thou spare thyself, thou shalt have my curse upon thee." The Chancellor Olivier himself, for a long while devoted to the Guises, but now seriously ill and disquieted about the future of his soul, said to himself, quite low, as he saw the Cardinal of Lorraine, from whom he had just received a visit, going out, "Ah! cardinal, you are getting us all damned!" [Illustration: Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condo----285] The mysterious chieftain, the mute captain of the conspiracy of Amboise, Prince Louis of Conde, remained unattainted, and he remained at Amboise itself.