Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

thought it not impossible that it might turn out to
be so, and that themselves and not the Huguenots
would be the victims of the drama now in progress.
The courtiers murmured, the priests were
indignant, the populace expected every day to see
Charles go over to the "religion;" and neither the
Pope nor the King of Spain could comprehend why
the king was so bent on marrying his sister to the
son of the Protestant Queen of Navarre. That, said
the direct and terrible Pius V, was to unite light and
darkness, and to join in concord God and Belial.
Meanwhile, Charles IX, who could not drop the
mask but at the risk of spoiling all, contemplated
with a certain pride the perfection of his own
dissimulation. "Ah, well," said he one evening to
his mother, "do I not play my role well?" "Yes,
very well, my son," replied Catherine, "but it is
nothing if it is not maintained to the end."[5] And
Charles did maintain it to the end, and even after
the St. Bartholomew, for he was fond of saying
with a laugh, "My big sister Margot caught all
these Huguenot rebels in the bird-catching style.
What has grieved me most is being obliged to
dissimulate so long."[6]
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