Exactly at midnight on the eve of St. Bartholo mew, (so called) 1572, the alarm bell was rung in the Palais Royale, as the signal of death. About five hundred Protestant Barons, Knights, and Gentlemen, who had come from all parts to honour the wedding, were among the rest barbarously butchered in their beds. The Gentlemen, Officers of the chamber, Governors, Tutors, and Household servants of the King of Navarre, and Prince of Conde, were driven out of their chambers where they slept in the Louvre, and being in the court, were massacred in the King's presence. The slaughter was now general throughout the city, and as Thuanus writes, "that the very channels ran down with blood into the river." This was however magnified as a glorious action, and the King, who was one of the most active murderers, boasted that he had put 70,000 heretics to death.

It is scarcely possible that it can even be supposed, that I can describe the horrors of that Sunday night. I might quote the words of a French author, who wrote the history of France from the reign of Henry II. to Henry IV. and say, "How strange and horrible a thing it was, in a great town to see at least 60,000 men with pistols, pikes, cutlasses, poniards, knives, and other bloody instruments, run swearing and blaspheming the sacred Majesty of God through the streets and into houses, where they most cruelly massacred all

Vide Thuan: Hist. lib. 52. 1572. Tom. 2. fol. 821. Geneva, 1620.

whomsoever they met without regard of estate, condition, sex, or age.

"The streets paved with bodies cut and hewed to pieces; the gates and entries of houses, palaces, and public places died with blood. Shoutings and ballooings of the murderers, mixed with continual noise of pistols and calivers discharged; the pitiful cries and shrieks of those that were murdered. Slain bodies cast out of the windows upon the stones, and drawn through the dirt. Strange noise of whistlings, breaking of doors and windows with bills and stones. The spoiling and sacking of houses. Carts, some carrying away the spoils, and others the dead bodies, which were thrown into the river Seine, all now red with blood, which ran out of the town and from the King's Palace." While the horrid scene was transacting, many Priests ran about the city with crucifixes in one hand and daggers in the other, to encourage the slaughter.

A band of ruffians soon rushed into my chamber, while I was upon my knees supplicating my King. Immediately they (what they called) despatched me, while the young Duke of Guise waited at the door in expectation of receiving my head to present it to the inhuman King, and his brutal mother. To those who are unacquainted with the power of our King, my testimony may appear incredible when I affirm, that my head was really severed from my body, and after being presented to the King and his mother, she sent it embalmed to Rome, as a present to the Prisoner and

the Cardinal of Lorrain. Not satisfied with what they had done to me, they proceeded to deprive me of some of the members of my body, after which I was dragged through the streets of the city for three days, and then hung up by my feet to a gibbet at Montfaucon. The general opinion now in France was that I was dead, and I am certain the Prisoner had no idea of seeing me alive again.

He now gave Charles IX. public thanks for his infernal work. He ordered the most solemn rejoicings at Rome. He sung Te Deum, and presumed to give the Almighty public thanks for this victory. He also issued forth a Bull for a Jubilee to be observed throughout the Kingdom of France on the 7th day of December, 1572, as a particular day of great and unusual joy for what he called the happy success of the French King against his heretic or protestant subjects. He also exhorted Charles to pursue this salutary and blessed enterprise, and fall upon them who called in question his usurped supremacy. This cruel slaughter brought on a fourth civil war. A fresh peace was concluded in the year 1573, with the Protestants; yet a fifth war broke out the next year, when Charles IX. stained with the blood of thousands of his subjects, which called for vengeance, was seized by order of our Sovereign, by one of his officers, named Mr. Death, and from that time, has been detained a prisoner in the fiery cell under the charge of the keeper of the black gulf. He left no issue on earth.

Cross-examined by Counsellor Quibble.

Q. You are the first man I ever heard speak after he lost his head!

A. Although I may be the first man that you have heard speak after his head has been severed from his body; I am not the first that has appeared as a witness after being slain. John the beloved servant of our King declares, and this court knows it to be a fact, "that those who were slain for the word of God, and the testimony which they held," not only spake after, but spake with a loud voice, and applied to our Lord for judgment against their murderers, and were graciously heard." And he also testifies, that he saw on thrones such as were, like me, really beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, Antichrist, or his image ;† and that they lived and reigned afterward with our Sovereign King. For my own part, I declare, that I have enjoyed more real life from the day I was beheaded than ever I did before.

Father Paul, sworn.

Q. As you wrote the History of the Council of Trent, will you relate to the court what you know of the Prisoner, and some of the proceedings of that rebellious assembly?

A. The Council of Trent was first summoned by the Prisoner under the name of Paul III. It first met on the 13th of December, 1545, and con

tinued about eighteen years. Previous to the opening of it, the Prisoner proclaimed a Jubilee at Rome, promising pardon of all sins, to all who prayed for the Council, confessed their sins, went in procession, and fasted three days. The Council was opened by the Legate Monte, who sung the Mass of the Holy Ghost. Previous to the meeting of this Council, the Prisoner, by his base conduct, had caused many in Germany and other parts of Europe to reject his authority. By the name of Urban II. about the year 1100, he first set up the money-making trade of vending Indulgences, and by the name of Leo X. in 1517, he acquired immense sums from all Europe. Leo however divided the profits with his sister Magdalene, the wife of Cibo, bastard of Innocent VIII. by reason of which Leo was made a Cardinal when he was only fourteen years old. Leo gave his sister all the profits arising from Indulgences in Saxony, and a part of Germany, and she set them up to sale to the highest bidder. The pardoncollected immense sums from every namongers tion to which they were sent, as appears by one Friar Samson, who collected 120,000 crowns among Swiss only.

The Prisoner haying changed his name to Adrian VI. in the year 1522, and to that of Clement VII. in 1524, and to Paul III. in 1534, he created his illegitimate son Peter Aloisius, Duke of Parma and Placentia, and a son of his a Cardinal at the age of fourteen. A son of his illegitimate daughter Constanza, was also made another; and his