lk and laughter. It was hard to
detect danger lurking under these things, under the silk, within the
flashing, gleaming cups, behind smiling eyes; still harder to discern
below these fair appearances a peril from which a Crillon shrank.

But to Bazan, as he waited with tortured nerves, these things were
nothing. They were no more than fair flowers to the man who espies the
coils of a snake among the blossoms. Crillon's whisper had revealed all
to him--all, in one brief sentence; so that when he presently recognized
Michel Berthaud standing near the upper end of the table and on the
farther side of it, in attendance upon the Duke of Guise, he felt no
astonishment, but only a shrewd suspicion of the quarter from which the
danger might be expected.

The king, a man of thirty-seven, so effeminate in appearance that it was
hard to believe he had seen famous fields and once bidden fair to be a
great Captain, was nursing a dog on his lap, the while he listened with
a weary air to the whispers of the beautiful woman who sat next him.
Apparently he had a niggard ear even for her witcheries, and little
appetite save for the wine flask. Lassitude lived in his eyes, his long
thin fingers trembled. Bazan watched him drain his goblet of wine,
almost as soon as he sat down, and watched him, too, hold out the gold
cup to be filled again. The task was performed by an assiduous hand, and
for a moment the king poised the cup in his fingers, speaking to his
neighbour the while. Then he laid it down, but his hand did not quit its
neighbourhood.

The next moment the room rang with a cry of alarm and indignation, and
every face was turned one way. Bazan with unparalleled audacity had
stepped forward, had seized the sacred cup almost from the royal hand,
and drained it!

While some sprang from their seats, two or three seized the culprit and
held him fast. One more enthusiastic than the others or more keenly
sensitive to the outrage of which he had been guilty, aimed a fierce
blow at his breast with a poniard. The stroke was well meant, nay, was
well directed; but it was adroitly intercepted by M. de Crillon, who had
been among the first to rise. With a blow of his sheathed sword he sent
the dagger spinning towards the ceiling.

"Back!" he cried, in a voice of thunder, placing himself before the
culprit. "Stand back, I say! I will answer to the king for all!"

He cleared a space before him with his scabbard, and a quick signal
brought t