s so often that of his friend Monsieur de Noirmoutier. He is
afraid of seeing the curtains put suddenly back and, through the mists
of his last sleep, the dark faces of the assassins and the gleaming of
their daggers! Yet why should either you or he be afraid--a gurgle, a
sigh, and all would be over!"

A shudder moved the shoulders of Claire as she drew nearer to the blaze,
and, by consequence, further from the restless encroachments of the Abbe
John's three-legged stool.

"He is a brave man, though he has done such ill," she said, sighing. "I
love brave men!"

The Abbe John instantly resolved to demand the captaincy of a forlorn
hope from the Bearnais, and so charge single-handed upon the ramparts of
Paris.

But the Professor of the Sorbonne would listen to no praise whatsoever
of the Guises. "The Duke," he averred, "spins his courage out of the
weakness of others. He takes the King of France for a coward. 'He does
not dare slay me,' he boasts; 'I am safe in his castle as in mine own
house. If Henry of Valois slew me, he would have three-quarters of his
realm about his ears in a week! And what is better, he knows it!'"

"Yes," said the Abbe John, speaking for the first time, "and I heard his
sister, Madame de Montpensier, say only to-day, that she and her brother
Henry were going to give the King the third of the three crowns on his
scutcheon. He has been King of Poland, he is King of France, and the
third crown represents the heavenly crown which will soon be his.
Alternatively, she exhibits to all comers, even in the antechamber of
the King, the golden scissors with which she is going to cut a tonsure
for 'Brother Henry,' as she calls him--the Monk Henry of that order of
the Penitents which he organised in one of his fits of piety!"

Jean-aux-Choux shook his shaggy head like a huge water-spaniel.

"They flatter themselves, these dogs of Guise," he said; "they fill
themselves with costly wine, that the flower of life pass them not by.
They hasten to crown themselves with rosebuds, ere they be withered.
'Let us leave the husks of our pleasures in every place,' they say. 'For
this is our lot. We alone are the great of the earth. The earth
belongeth to Lorraine, and the goodliness thereof. Before us, kings
twice-born, cradled in purple, are as naught. A good man is an insult to
us. Let us slay and make an end, even as we did on the Eve of
Bartholomew, that we may pass in and enjoy the land'--such is their
insolen