the
flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden side, above
the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and around the
middle windows. On both sides of the house the ornamentation of the
principal window, which projected some feet from the wall, rose to the
frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion, hung there like a lantern.
The casings of the other windows were inlaid on the stone with precious
marbles.

In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there
was an air of melancholy about it. It was darkened by the buildings
that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d'Alencon which threw
a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence
reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude,
soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single
emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home
wherein they love.

It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this
haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour
out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and
give himself up to the poesy he loved,--pleasures denied him by the
cares of a cruel royalty. Here, alone, were his great soul and his high
intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up,
for a few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of
fatherhood,--pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that
a sense of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.

In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just
described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory, which
was the boudoir of those days. She was arranging the long curls of her
beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new coif, and
gazing intently into her mirror.

"It is nearly four o'clock; that interminable council must surely be
over," she thought to herself. "Jacob has returned from the Louvre;
he says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the
councillors summoned and the length of the session. What can have
happened? Is it some misfortune? Good God! surely _he_ knows how
suspense wears out the soul! Perhaps he has gone a-hunting? If he is
happy and amused, it is all right. When I see him gay, I forget all I
have suffered."

She drew her hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some trifling
wrinkle in her gown, turnin