The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
Читать онлайн книгу.
furnace, but the enamel would not fuse. He was in despair. The fuel was giving out. He must have more heat. What should he do? He had no time to go after more wood; besides, he had no money to pay for it. He seized the chairs, broke them up, and hurled them into the furnace. Still the glazing did not melt. Then he split up the table. His wife and children looked on in amazement. Was be crazy? "More wood! More wood!" That is his only answer. Victory! He has discovered the secret. The glazing melts, and from this time on there will be a new em in the manufacture of earthen-ware.
The potter turns preacher. Others imitate him. Churches are gathered. It is a crime to read the Bible. But the printing-presses are at work; and peddlers are carrying the book in their packs, selling copies here and there, which the people read secretly; and so the new religion gets a foothold all over the kingdom.
Those who accept the new faith no longer spend their time in carousing, but sing psalms instead. Those who laugh at them for being so religious call them Huguons — people who sing in the streets. They soon are known as Huguenots.
The priests cannot tolerate the heretics. One day a company of soldiers, led by priests, enter the town where the potter is at work. The soldiers are blood-thirsty wretches.
"Where are the heretics? Let us cut their throats" they shout.
They seize the unresisting inhabitants, cut out their tongues, gash their faces, or cleave their heads open. Some are thrust into prison, fourteen burned to death, others maimed for life.
From Meaux the soldiers and priests go on to the town of Merindol. The soldiers are let loose upon it. They plunge their spears into the breasts of the defenceless, unresisting people; hurl men and women from the walls upon the rocks below; seize all the goods; tear down the houses, and leave it a scene of indescribable desolation. Have the people revolted? No. Have they committed any crime? No. Are they not law-abiding and peaceful? Yes. They have only stayed away from mass, have been reading the Bible, and worshipping God in their own way. That is all.
"All printing must be stopped!"
And now to go back a little. We have previously seen that, after Ferdinand of Spain had driven the Moore out of that country, he made war upon the Queen of Navarre, and seized the southern half of her kingdom, because she was weak, he powerful, and because he wanted it Id his estimation, might made it right.
The Queen of Navarre had a son, Henry, who was only seven years old at the time, and who all through life tried to recover what Ferdinand and Isabella had stolen from him, but failed. His life was one long disappointment He bad a beautiful daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, who was married to Anthony of Bourbon, brother of Antoinette, who married the Duke of Guise, whom we saw at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with Francis I., King of France. There came a day when the gray-haired man, whose life bad been so bitter, held a babe in his arms — a grandson.
"Ah! this is the boy who will redress my wrongs! To make him strong, I will give him a little good old wine and garlic," says the delighted grandfather; and he pours wine into the babe's mouth, and rubs its lips with garlic.
Eight years pass, and Jeanne d'Albret and her boy Henry go to Paris to attend a wedding. The grandson of Francis I. is to be married — a boy sixteen years old, named for his grandfather, Francis. His mother is the baby who was born in Florence about the time the kings and nobles met at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. She is the niece of Leo X., and her name is Catherine de' Medici. She is Queen of France. Her confessor in childhood was one of the men who obey orders — a Jesuit priest; and she believes, with them, that if a thing is good in itself, it is right to use any means to attain it. Catherine has four children — Francis (the oldest), Charles, Henry, and Marguerite, a wilful girl, seven years old. Who is the bride! A beautiful girl from Scotland, Mary by name. Her mother is sister of the Duke of Guise, whom we saw at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and her grandmother was Margaret, sister of Henry VIII., who spent a night in the old manor-house at Scrooby, when she was on her wedding-journey. She has been several years in France. She can write Latin, French, and English, and speak the languages fluently. She can sing, is quite a poet, and is very beautiful. Among the guests from Scotland is a learned man, George Buchanan, who composes a nuptial poem:
To the brave youth a royal kindred lent,
True to thy tender cause, a glad consent,
That dearly made a sister queen a wife.
The gentle partner of thy throne and life;
While beauty, birth, and virtue, nobly fair,
And plighted faith and mutual love, were there."
The King of France, Henry, is greatly pleased with the strong, brave boy from the Pyrenees.
"Will you be my son?" the king asks.
"No, sir. There is my father, Anthony of Bourbon," the boy replies.
"Ha! ha! you are a brave boy! Will you be my son-in-law, then?"
"Oh yes, sir."
Perhaps the boy has already taken a fancy to little Marguerite; but, be that as it may, the answer so pleases the king that Henry of Navarre and Marguerite are betrothed on the spot.
The wedding takes place, and there is great rejoicing. The King of France holds a tournament, and himself enters the lists against the Duke of Montgomery, from Scotland; but the Scotchman's lance breaks, a splinter pierces the king's eye, who reels from his horse and tumbles to the ground. Nevermore will Henry II., King of France, lead his soldiers to battle. Death comes; and Francis II. and Mary of Scotland are king and queen.
Francis is a spendthrift. He borrows money, lays it out in rich dresses for himself and Mary, and lavishes it upon his favorites. The people come for their pay, and the king laughs in their face. They grew importunate.
"Pay us!" they say.
"Help yourself, if you can."
"You have our money. Pay us!"
"Take yourself off, or the king will have you hanged," says the Cardinal of Lorraine, who sets the carpenters to work building a gibbet in front of the Palace of Fontainebleau.
The cheated creditors hear the Bound of the axe and hammer, and turn sadly away. Liberty for the king, but none for the people. In their anger, some who were Catholics turn Huguenots; and so the Huguenots become a political party.
The priests erect statues of the Virgin Mary along the streets, and watch to see who bows down and worships, and who passes by. The passers-by have a black mark set against their names. War breaks out. The Duke of Guise, who commands Francis's troops, is hard-hearted. He strings Huguenot captives on pales, and throws them into the river Seine. Some die firmly, without a quivering of the lip or trembling of the eyelids.
"How brazen-faced and mad these wretches are! Death does not abate their pride," says the Cardinal of Lorraine.
The Huguenot leaders are exasperated. They resolve to rid the country of the Guises, and seize the king, who is in the castle at Blois. But a traitor reveals the plot, and the Guises remove Francis to the Château of Amboise, on the banks of the