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

haggard. He groans deeply, as if he were suffering
in soul. His starts are sudden and violent. There
flits at times across his face a dark shadow, as if
some horrible sight, afflicting him with unutterable
woe, were disclosed to him; and a quick tremor at
these moments runs through all his frame. He calls
his attendants about him and, mustering all the
strength left him, he protests that it is not he who is
to blame, inasmuch as his orders were exceeded.
What orders? we ask; and what deed is it, the
memory of which so burdens and terrifies the
dying monarch?
We must leave the couch of Francis while we
narrate one of the greatest of the crimes that
blackened his reign. The scene of the tragedy
which projected such dismal shadows around the
death-bed of the king was laid in Provence. In
ancient times Provence was comparatively a desert.
Its somewhat infertile soil was but thinly peopled,
and but indifferently tilled and planted. It lay
strewn all over with great boulders, as if here the
giants had warred, or some volcanic explosion had
rained a shower of stones upon it. The Vaudois
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