better not forgive your
enemy--till after you had slain him. And the dread "Remember the
Bartholomew," printed on all Huguenot hearts, was murmured behind the
clenched teeth of Jean-aux-Choux. The Huguenots would be avenged.
Innocent blood would no more cry unheeded from the ground. The hated
League would fall with its chief. With Guise would perish the Guisards.

* * * * *

The princes of Lorraine had beheld their power grow through four reigns.
It culminated on the day of the Barricades, when a king of France
appealed to a subject to deliver him from the anger of the citizens of
his own capital. So, secure in his power, Guise scorned all thought of
harm to himself.

"They dare not," he repeated over and over, both to himself and to
others; "the King--his kingdom--hangs upon a single hair, and that hair
is my life!"

So he walked into the armed and defended fortress of his mortal enemy as
freely as into his own house. Like perfect love, perfect contempt
casteth out fear.

Yet when once he had saluted the company in the hall of audience, Guise
sat him down by the fire and complained of being cold. He had, he said,
lain down in his damp clothes, and had risen up hastily to obey the
King's message.

"Soon you will be hot enough upon the branders of Tophet!" muttered D'O,
the royal favourite, to Revol, the King's secretary, who went and came
between the inner cabinet and the chamber where the council were sitting
about a great table.

The superintendent of the finances, one Petremol, was reading a report.
The Archbishop of Lyons bent over to the Duke of Guise, where he sat
warming him by the fire.

"Where goes our royal Penitent so early--I mistrust his zeal? And
specially," he added, as a furious burst of sleet battered like driven
sea-spray on the leaded panes of the council room, "on such a morning;
it were shame to turn out a dog."

"Oh, the dog goes of his own will--into retreat, as usual!" said the
Duke carelessly; "in half-an-hour we shall see him set off with a dozen
silken scourges and the softest down pillows in the castle. Our reverend
Henry is of the excellent order of Saint Commode!"

Presently, leaving the fireside, the Duke returned to the table where
the others sat. It was observed that he was still pale. But the qualm
was physical only; no shade of fear mixed with it. He asked for a
handkerchief from any of his people who might have followed him. As the
greates