Note 944 — Chapter XVIII
Reading edition
Le Reveille-Matin des François, etc., Archives curieuses, vii. 173; Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi (1574), i. 33. It has been customary to interpret this language and similar expressions as covertly referring to the massacre which was then four days off. But this seems absurd. Certainly, if Charles was privy to the plan for Coligny's murder, he must have expected him to be killed on Friday—that is, within less than two days. If so, what peculiar significance in the four days? For, if a general massacre had been at first contemplated, no interval of two days would have been allowed. Everybody must have known that if the arquebuse shot had done its work, and Coligny had been killed on the spot, every Huguenot would have been far from the walls of Paris long before Sunday. As it was, it was only the admiral's confidence, and the impossibility of moving him with safety, that detained them.