s the chosen of God, the approved,
and that if he, Jacques Clement, would only kill the King, angels would
immediately waft his body, safe and unseen, to the quiet of his convent.

Had he not heard the Bull of the Pope read by the Father Superior? Had
the Holy Office not promised him immunity, nay, even canonisation--had
not Madame de Montpensier----? But enough, Jacques Clement, riotous monk
of Sens, sat him down and made his dagger like a needle for sharpness,
like a mirror for polish. This he did when he should have been reading
his breviary in the monastery of the Dominicans in the Rue
Saint-Jacques.

* * * * *

So it came to pass that on the evening of the third day of August, 1589,
Jean-aux-Choux, still wearing his great shepherd's cloak, though all
Perpignan city panted in the fervent heat, and the cool water of the Tet
reeked against the sun-heated banks, stood again at the door of that
gloomy house in the Street of the Money.

Above, the three men waited as before. But this time there was no
hesitation about admittance, not even a question asked. The three men
who had done a great thing far away, without lifting one of their little
fingers, now waited, tense with anxiety--not for themselves, for no one
of them cared for his own safety, but to know that they had won the game
for their Church and cause.

To them Jean-aux-Choux opened his mouth.

"He is dead!" he announced, solemnly--"Henry of Valois is dead! The
siege of Paris is raised. Epernon and the great lords have refused to
serve a Huguenot king. They have gone home----"

"And the Bearnais--the Bearnais?" interrupted Mariana hoarsely, "what of
him?"

"I saw him ride sadly away--the White Scarves only following!"

Then for once, at the crowning moment of his life, Mariana, the smiling
Jesuit, leaned face-forward on the table. His strength had gone from
him.

"Enough," he said, "I have done the Society's will. But so great success
even I had not hoped for!"

And he rocked himself to and fro in that terrible crisis of nervous
emotion which comes only to the most self-restrained, while Teruel, the
Surintendant of the Holy Inquisition, and Frey Tullio his second, were
prodigal of their cares, lavishing restoratives, of which (in virtue of
their office) they had great store in the Street of the Money.

None minded Jean-aux-Choux, or even thanked him. But he, seeing a
parchment with a familiar name written upon it, th