Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/210

Rh found their victims, in the deep recesses of the mountain caves.

The Vaudois, it seemed, were silenced for ever. Even the Cardinal de Tournon was satisfied. And from the whole of Europe went up a tremendous shout of praise or blame.

Spain praised loudly. Spain, continually persecuting two entire nations, the Jews and the Moors; Spain whose autos daily sent the smoke of their human sacrifice to the blue heaven; whose Inquisition in forty years condemned over forty thousand heretics; whose armies, in one year (1570), sent fifty thousand Moors to death or slavery; Spain, the cruel, pure-eyed fanatic, piously setting a world in flames for the greater glory of God; Spain applauded.

But Switzerland, Germany, England, the natural allies of France, shrank back from her in horror. The Treaty of Crépy had already done its worst. France was France no longer; France which in 1543 could afford to say, "for the last thousand years and more I have been the haven and refuge of the afflicted and oppressed," France, in 1545, became a mere feeble copy and hanger-on of Spain.

Meanwhile, France herself was sorely divided. The Cardinal de Tournon, the Sorbonne, and its adherents triumphed. Margaret must have wept, I think; though, strangely enough, we possess no letter of hers interceding for the hunted Vaudois. Perhaps, in her northern castle, she did not hear the news until too late; the King, we may be sure, would keep silence. Perhaps, remembering the treaty just witnessed, she knew that she had lost the right to intercede.