Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/161

 1 5 72. ] THE MASS A CRE OF ST BAR THOL OME W. 141 tlieir friends in return might kill Guise and his uncle, whose power was troublesome to her. The massacre was the spontaneous work of theological frenzy heated to the boiling point. No imaginable army of murderers could have been provided by the most accomplished conspirator who would have executed such a work in such a way. The actors in it were the willing instru- ments of teachers of religion as sincere in their mad- ness as themselves. The equity of history requires that men be tried by the standard of their times. The citizens of Paris and Orleans may be pardoned if they were not more enlightened than the Sovereign Pontiff of Christendom and the Most Catholic King of Spain. Philip, when the news reached him, is said to have laughed for the first and only time in his life. He was happy in being saved from a combination which had threatened him with the loss of his Low Countries. But a deeper source of gratification to him was the pub- lic evidence that his brother-in-law no longer intended to tamper with heresy, that France was in no further danger of following England into schism, and that the seamless robe of the Saviour was not to be parted among His executioners. At Rome, in the circle of the saints, the September, delight was even more unbounded. Where the blood was flowing the voice of humanity could not utterly be stifled, and expressions of displeasure began early to be heard. 1 In the Holy City there was a uni- 1 'It is much lamented to see I Papists. Many be sorry that so the King's cruelty even by the I monstrous a murder was invented,