e eight Gascons held back, though their hands were on their daggers.
After all, the tiger was a tiger, and they were but hirelings. The
curtain which hid the King's closet shook as in a gale of wind. But
suddenly the terrible mask of Jean-aux-Choux surged up, so changed that
the victim did not recognise the man who had often made sport before
him.

"For Coligny--one!" cried the tragic fool.

And at that dread word the other traitor behind the arras might well
have trembled also. Then Jean struck his first blow.

"Saint Bartholomew!" cried Jean-aux-Choux, and struck the second time.

The Duke fell on his knees. The eight Gascons precipitated themselves
upon the man who had been deemed, and who had deemed himself, the most
invincible of the sons of men.

So strong was he that, even in death, he dragged them all after him,
like hounds tearing at the flanks of a dying tiger, till, with a cry of
"Oh, my friends--oh, what treachery! My sins----" the breath of life
went from him. And he fell prone, still clutching in his agony the foot
of the King's bed.

Then the turbaned, weasel face, pale and ghastly, jerked out of the
royal closet, and the quavering voice of the King asked Guise's own
question of sixteen years before--"Have you finished the work? Is he
dead?"

Being assured that his enemy was indeed dead, Henry at last came out,
standing over the body of the great Leaguer, holding back the skirts of
his dressing-gown with his hand.

"Ah, but he is big!" he said, and spurned him with his foot. Then he put
his hands on his brow, as if for a moment to hide the sight, or perhaps
to commune with himself. Suddenly he thrust out an arm and called the
man-slayers about him.

"Ye are my hands and arms," he said; "I shall not forget that you have
done this for my sake."

"Not I!" said Jean-aux-Choux promptly. "I have done it for the sake of
Coligny, whom he murdered even so. His blood--my master's blood--has
called a long while from the ground. And so"--looking straight at the
King--"perish all those who put their hands to the slaughter of the
Bartholomew night."

Then King Henry of Valois abased his eyes, and men could hear his teeth
chatter in his head. For, indeed, he and Catherine, his mother--the same
who now lay a-dying in the chamber below--had guided, with foxy cunning
and Italianate guile, that deadly conjuration.

He was, however, too much elated to be long subdued.

"At any rate," he said, "Guise is dead.