Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 6.djvu/22

x their destruction; if he paid attentions to them, it is a proof that he was dissembhng. I will quote a single story only, one repeated in all the books, and one which shows with what levity the most improbable rumours are admitted.

About a year before St. Bartholomew's Day, it is said, a plan of massacre had been already arranged; it was this. There was to be built on the Pré-aux-Clercs a wooden tower; the Duke of Guise, with a body of Catholic gentry and soldiery, was to be posted therein, and the Admiral with his Protestants was to have made a sham attack, as if to give the King a siege in spectacle. As soon as this kind of tournament had begun, the Catholics were, at a signal, to load their pieces and kill their surprised enemies before they could possibly stand on their guard. To improve the story, it is added that a favourite of Charles IX., named Lignerolles, foolishly revealed the plot by saying to the King, who was using harsh language about the Protestant lords, "Ah! Sire, wait a little longer; we have a fort which will avenge us of all the heretics" (observe, if you please, that not a stick of this fort was yet in position); whereupon the King took care to have the blabber assassinated. The plan, they say, was devised by the Chancellor