The more tardy the homage, the greater.
The actual murderers of Coligny, the real projectors of the St.Bartholomew, Catherine de' Medici and her son the Duke of Anjou, at the very moment when they had just ordered the massacre, were seized with affright at the first sound of their crime.

The Duke of Anjou finishes his story with this page "After but two hours' rest during the night, just as the day was beginning to break, the king, the queen my mother, and I went to the frontal of the Louvre, adjoining the tennis-court, into a room which looks upon the area of the stable-yard, to see the commencement of the work.

We had not been there long when, as we were weighing the issues and the consequence of so great an enterprise, on which, sooth to say, we had up to that time scarcely bestowed a thought, we heard a pistol-shot fired.

I could not say in what spot, or whether it knocked over anybody; but well know I that the sound wounded all three of us so deeply in spirit that it knocked over our senses and judgment, stricken with terror and apprehension at the great troubles which were then about to set in.

To prevent them, we sent a gentleman at once and with all haste to M.de Guise, to tell him and command him expressly from us to retire into his quarters, and be very careful to take no steps against the admiral, this single command putting a stop to everything else, because it had been determined that in no spot in the city should any steps be taken until, as a preliminary, the admiral had been killed.
But soon afterwards the gentleman returning told us that M.de Guise had answered him that the command came too late, that the admiral was dead, and the work was begun throughout the rest of the city.