Henry M. Baird · 156 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · Marriages and festivities of the court.

Henry had sworn to behold with his own eyes the punishment of Anne du Bourg. But the grateful sight was not in store for him. From the Mercuriale and the persecution of heretics he turned his attention to the celebration of the marriages which were to cement the indissoluble peace that had at length been concluded between the kingdoms of France and Spain. The most splendid preparations were made for the entertainment of the brilliant train of noblemen who came to represent the dignity of the crown of Spain, and to claim the destined bride of Philip. The "Hôtel des Tournelles"—a favorite palace of more than one king of France—was magnificently decorated; for in its great hall the nuptials were appointed to be celebrated. In the broad street of Saint Antoine, in front of this palace, the lists were erected, and the beauty and nobility of France viewed, from the windows on either side, the contest of the most distinguished knights, and applauded their feats of daring and skill. A few paces farther, and just inside the moat, stood a frowning pile, whose sombre and repulsive front might have struck a beholder as being as much out of place as the skeleton at the feast—the ill-omened Bastile. Five prisoners, immured for their conscientious boldness in its gloomy dungeons, and awaiting a terrible fate, distinctly heard, day after day, as the tourney continued, the inspiriting notes of the clarion and hautboy, deepening by contrast the horrors of their situation. There was the same incongruity between the king's pursuit of pleasure and his ferocity. From the festivities, it is said, he turned aside to order Montgomery to proceed, the very moment the tourney was over, to the Pays de Caux—a hot-bed of the "Lutheran" heresy—to destroy with the sword the resisting, to put out the eyes of the suspected, and to torture and burn the guilty. It was believed, moreover, that he himself would then proceed to the southern parts of France, and set on foot a rigorous persecution of the Protestants, with whom those regions swarmed.

The nuptial torches burned not less bright for the gloom overhanging the despised and abominated Lutherans. But in an instant, as by the touch of a magician's wand, they were turned into the funereal tapers of Henry the Second.