all fighting and cut-throat work. The unhappy woman accordingly, which was still both young and fair, was constrained, for to save her life, to celebrate wedding and funeral all in one. Yet was she very excusable; for indeed what could a poor fragile, feeble woman have done else, unless it had been to kill herself, or give her tender bosom to the murderous steel? But verily
Le temps n'est plus, belle bergeronnette,
(Those days be done, fair shepherdess;)
and these fond fanatics of yore exist no more. Beside, doth not our holy Christian faith forbid it? This is a grand excuse for all widows nowadays, who always say,—and if 'twere not forbid of God, they would kill themselves. Thus do they mask their inaction.
At this same massacre was made another widow, a lady of very good family and most beauteous and charming. The same, while, yet in the first desolation of widowhood, was forced by a gentleman that I know well enough by name; whereat was she so bewildered and disconsolate she did well nigh lose her senses for some while. Yet presently after she did recover her wits and making the best of her widowhood and going back little by little to worldly vanities and regaining her natural lively spirits, did forget her wrongs and make a new match, gallant and high-born. And in this I ween she did well.
I will tell yet another story of this massacre. Another lady which was there made a widow by the death of her husband, murdered like the rest, was in such sorrow and despair thereat, that whenever she did set eyes on a poor unoffending Catholic, even though he had not
[275]
