massacre of Saint Bartholomew. No wonder
Blois fell into neglect. It had given existence
to the most dreadful incident of modern
times; and the dances of young Navarre and
his comrades—the assemblies of fair women
and brave men who were celebrating his
approaching nuptials, were the last days of
courtly splendour that shone on the devoted
castle. But a castle is nothing without a
murder of its own; and this was only the
imagining of the frightful act; so let us slip
by a few years, and again we find a French
king in occupation of the château. It is the
year fifteen hundred and eighty-eight, and
the king is Henry the Third—a dastard,
effeminate tyrant, and fitting termination to
the deteriorated line of Valois.

Again there is a series of rejoicings, and the
old Château-Blois puts on its holiday apparel;
for there is a visitor at the castle far more
powerful than the king,—a strong-minded,
self-willed, unscrupulous man, who does not
even try to conceal his hatred and contempt
of the puppet who filled and dishonoured the
throne. This is the hard-featured, firm-
handed Duke of Guise, who had studied
French history to such an extent, that he has
determined to emulate the old mayors of the
palace, and after a few years' government in
the name of the phantom monarch, to assume
the crown openly, and send the wretched
king into a convent. Scissors were already
kept in readiness by Guise's sister, to clip
the locks of Henry, and arrangements made
to find a fitting monastery for him, under the
name of Friar Henry of Valois. But Friar
Henry of Valois was resolved to keep his
shining curls, and outwitted the bold Balafré.

A convention of the states had been
summoned, over which, by bribery and terror,
the Guises had obtained supreme authority.
It was only that they might give the
semblance of legality to the plans of the
discontented, that the form of a deliberative
assembly had been given to the deputies now
collected in Blois. Each party knew perfectly
well what the other meant, but both
concealed their real intentions. The king was
treated with the most profound respect; the
duke with the greatest trust and confidence.
The latter was too apt to despise his enemy,
who, he already felt, was his victim. He did
not give so paltry a being credit for the
desperate game he played. But he should
have remembered that he had to do with the
son of Catherine de Medicis. He should
have observed that all of a sudden the king
betook himself to the most strict religious
observances,—fastings, vigils, prayers,—and
received into the château monks of various
orders, whom he lodged in little cells above
his chamber. He had resolved on the death
of Guise;—but, to accomplish this, he
required accomplices. He availed himself of a
certain night when there was a joyous
celebration of the marriage of Christine of
Lorraine with Ferdinand de Medicis. It was
December. The court, occupied with the
ball did not perceive the disappearance of
the Marshal d'Aumont, and the Sieurs de
Rambouillet, and Beauvais de Nangis. The
king consulted them on the conduct of the
Guises, but did not venture to hint what
he had resolved. The three counsellors
discussed the question, but offered no proposition.
Some other friends were sent for.
They also slipped noiselessly out of the ballroom.
They were Louis d'Argennes and
Colonel Alphonso Corse. They were bolder;
they resolved on the murder of Balafré—
nodded mutely to each other as they
separated, and by different doors rejoined the
dancers. How they danced that night, and
smiled at their partners, and joked at supper!
And so did the other guests. Among the
rest the doomed Balafré distinguished
himself by his gaiety and abandon.

The day was fixed for the twenty-third.
Nor were warnings, as usual in such cases,
wanting. One day a roll of paper was placed
on Guise's plate at dinner. On it was
written, "Be on your guard. There is a
design against you." He contemptuously
wrote, "They dare not," and threw the paper
under the table. But Christmas was drawing
near. Henry gave way to still wilder
manifestations of religious austerity,—and on
the night of the twenty-second, announced
that on the following day he was going in
pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Clery. In the
morning of that day the Duke of Guise was
to be murdered.

A certain Loignac had undertaken the
task, and had engaged the services of another
villain of the name of Larchant. The monks
were removed privately from their cells in
the roof, and replaced with the ordinary
guards of the king, called the Forty-five,
whom he had bought over to his design.
Henry gave orders that he should be called
at four o'clock. At that hour punctually, he
rose,—as calmly, as unembarrassed as if he
did not know of the dreadful thing that was
to be done—and, candle in hand, went into
the cabinet. Du Halde and Bellegarde, his
valets-de-chambre were there already. Loignac
soon arrives with nine of the guard, who
had slipped down from the garret on tiptoe,
but well armed. There, by the light of a
solitary candle they receive their last instructions.
And the king posts them himself in
his own bedchamber, with orders to let no
one out or in. He returns to the cabinet,
without a change of muscle, or the least
appearance of emotion; and sends down word
to the Marshal d'Aumont to open the council
of the day, at which Guise was to take his
seat. He despatches Bellegarde at the same
time with two chaplains into the oratory,
commanding them to offer up their prayers
for the success of an enterprise undertaken
for the repose of the kingdom.

The weather was cold and sombre; a chilly
rain was falling in torrents, when about half-