Through France the word had gone forth
that the Huguenots must die; and in the busy town the same roof-tree
sheltered fear and hate, rage and cupidity. On one side of the party-
wall murder lurked fierce-eyed; on the other, the victim lay watching the
latch, and shaking at a step. Strong men tasted the bitterness of death,
and women clasping their babes to their breasts smiled sickly into
children's eyes.
The signal only was lacking. It would come, said some, from Saumur,
where Montsoreau, the Duke of Anjou's Lieutenant-Governor and a Papist,
had his quarters. From Paris, said others, directly from the King. It
might come at any hour now, in the day or in the night; the magistrates,
it was whispered, were in continuous session, awaiting its coming. No
wonder that from lofty gable windows, and from dormers set high above the
tiles, haggard faces looked northward and eastward, and ears sharpened by
fear imagined above the noises of the city the ring of the iron shoes
that carried doom.
Doubtless the majority desired--as the majority in France have always
desired--peace. But in the purlieus about the cathedral and in the lanes
where the sacristans lived, in convent parlours and college courts, among
all whose livelihood the new faith threatened, was a stir as of a hive
deranged.
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