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

ones. The ravens were driven away; the next day,
at the same hour, they returned, and so did they for
many days in succession.
There, duly at the appointed time, were the
sable visitants of the Louvre, performing their
gyrations round the roofs and chimneys of the illomened
palace, and making its courts resound with
the echoes of their horrid cawings. This did not
tend to lighten the melancholy of the king.
One night he awoke with fearful sounds in his
ears. It seemed--so he thought--that a dreadful fight
was going on in the city. There were shoutings and
shrieks and curses, and mingling with these were
the tocsin's knell and the sharp ring of fire-arms--in
short, all those dismal noises which had filled Paris
on the night of the massacre. A messenger was
dispatched to ascertain the cause of the uproar. He
returned to say that all was at peace in the city, and
that the sounds which had so terrified the king were
wholly imaginary. These incessant apprehensions
brought on at last an illness. The king's
constitution, sickly from the first, had been drained
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