expelled the priests and put ministers in their place. At Pau she hung two of the canons of S. Martin's, and sent a Huguenot preacher into the pulpit. The town council remonstrated. The Queen's reply was that she would with her troopers drive the councillors to be present at his predications. She made it punishable with death as high treason not only for a priest to say Mass, but for man, woman, or child to attend at one.
Charles IX of France went to Nerac, in Gascony, to visit Jeanne.
"In some respects," says Mr. White, "the province of Gascony through which the Court was now travelling, had suffered more than any part of France from the effects of the war. The Protestants had succeeded in putting down Romanism, and at every step he took Charles was reminded of the outrages offered to his religion; he restored the old form of worship, but the scenes he then witnessed appear never to have been forgotten. As he rode along by the side of the Queen of Navarre he pointed to the ruined monasteries, the broken crosses, the polluted churches; he showed her the mutilated images of the Virgin and the saints, the desecrated graveyards, the relics scattered to the winds of heaven."[1]
Jeanne looked with sparkling eyes and with a heart that swelled with exultation at this wreckage, but she noticed the pain it caused to the young king, and thenceforth regarded him with distrust.
A Béarnais named Gondin ventured to remonstrate with Jeanne at her high-handed dealings. "The King of France," said she, "choses to have but one religion in his realm. I am a queen, and I choose to have but one." "The King of France!" echoed Gondin; "that is another matter. I
- ↑ White (H.), The Massacre of S. Bartholomew. London, 1868.
