Over the exotic,
nervous creature who had inherited so many delicacies of
organisation, the coarse rage or rabies of the wolf, part, doubtless,
of an inheritance older still, had asserted itself on that terrible
night of Saint Bartholomew, at the mere sight, the scent, of blood,
in the crime he had at least allowed others to commit; and it was not
an unfriendly witness who recorded that, the fever once upon him, for
an hour he had been less a man than a beast of prey. But,
exemplifying that exquisite fineness of cruelty proper to an ideal
tragedy, with the [133] work of his madness all around him, he awoke
sane next day, to remain so--aged at twenty-one--seeking for the few
months left him to forget himself in his old out-of-door amusements,
rending a consumptive bosom with the perpetual horn-blowing which
could never rouse again the gay morning of life.
"I have heard," says Brantome, of Elisabeth, Charles's queen, "that
on the Eve of Saint Bartholomew, she, having no knowledge of the
matter, went to rest at her accustomed hour, and, sleeping till the
morning, was told, as she arose, of the brave mystery then playing.
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