Nor will we pause either to discuss the secondary questions which meet us at the period of which we are telling the story; for example, the question whether Charles IX.

fired with his own hand on his Protestant subjects whom he had delivered over to the evil passions of the aristocracy and of the populace, or whether the balcony from which he is said to have indulged in this ferocious pastime existed at that time, in the sixteenth century, at the palace of the Louvre, and overlooking the Seine.

These questions are not without historic interest, and it is well for learned men to study them; but we consider them incapable of being resolved with certainty; and, even were they resolved, they would not give the key to the character of Charles IX.

and to the portion which appertains to him in the deed of cruelty with which his name remains connected.

The great historic fact of the St.Bartholomew is what we confine ourselves to; and we have attempted to depict it accurately as regards Charles IX.'s hesitations and equally feverish resolutions, his intermixture of open-heartedness and double-dealing in his treatment of Coliguy, towards whom he felt himself drawn without quite understanding him, and his puerile weakness in presence of his mother, whom he feared far more than he trusted.