Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready
instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous
massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who could think
of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abominations and horrors
of that time? They are, indeed, brought to abhor _that_ massacre.
Ferocious as they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike it,
because the politicians and fashionable teachers have no interest in
giving their passions exactly the same direction. Still, however, they
find it their interest to keep the same savage dispositions alive. It
was but the other day that they caused this very massacre to be acted on
the stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committed
it. In this tragic farce they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine in his
robes of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacle
intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusion
of blood? No: it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; it
was to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their clergy, to
an alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it ought
to exist at all, ought to exist not only in safety, but in reverence. It
was to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which one would think had
been gorged sufficiently) by variety and seasoning,--and to quicken them
to an alertness in new murders and massacres, if it should suit the
purpose of the Guises of the day.
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