Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 6.djvu/30

xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE seems very extraordinary, for "secrets travel fast in Paris."

It is not easy to decide what part the King took in the massacre; but if he did not approve it beforehand, he did not interfere with it. After two days of murder and outrage he disavowed the whole thing and tried to stop the carnage, f Rut the rage of the people had been let loose, and the people's thirst is not slaked with a little blood. More than sixty thousand victims were called for, and the King was obliged to swim with the resistless stream. He revoked his orders of mercy, and soon gave fresh ones for extending assassination aU over France.

Such is my opinion about the massacre of St. Rartholomew; and in setting it forth I shall say with Lord Byron :

"I only say, suppose this supposition." — Don Juan, cant. i. stan. 85. 1829.

He attributed the attempt on Coligny and the massacre to the Duke of Guise and the princes of the House of Lorraine.