not draw back, seemed in his eyes the most appalling mockery; but
ignorant who were in the secret, unable to guess how his diabolical
plot had been discovered, uncertain even whether the whole were not a
concerted piece, he went on playing his part mechanically; with
starting eyes and labouring chest, and lips that, twitching and
working, lost colour each minute. At length he missed a stroke, and
staggering leaned against the wall, his-face livid and ghastly. The
King took the alarm at that, and cried out that something was wrong.
Those who were sitting rose. I nodded to Maignan to go to the man.

"It is a fit," I said. "He is subject to them, and doubtless the
excitement--but I am sorry that it has spoiled your Majesty's game.

"It has not," Henry answered kindly. "The light is gone. But have him
looked to, will you, my friend? If La Riviere were here he might do
something for him."

While he spoke, the servants had gathered round the man, but with the
timidity which characterises that class in such emergencies, they would
not touch him. As I crossed the court, and they made way for me, the
Spaniard, who was still standing, though in a strange and distorted
fashion, turned his bloodshot eyes on me.

"A priest!" he muttered, framing the words with difficulty, "a priest!"

I directed Maignan to fetch one. "And do you," I continued to the
other servants, "take him into a room somewhere."

They obeyed, reluctantly. As they carried him out, the King, content
with my statement, was giving his hand to Mademoiselle to descend the
stairs; and neither he nor any, save the two men in my confidence, had
the slightest suspicion that aught was the matter beyond a natural
illness. But I shuddered when I considered how narrow had been the
King's escape, how trifling the circumstance which had led to
suspicion, how fortuitous the inspiration by which I had chanced on
discovery. The delay of a single day, the occurrence of the slightest
mishap, might have been fatal not to him only but to the best interests
of France; which his death at a time when he was still childless must
have plunged into the most melancholy of wars.

Of the wretched Spaniard I need say little more. Caught in his own
snare, he was no sooner withdrawn from the court than he fell into
violent convulsions, which held him until midnight when he died with
symptoms and under circumstances so nearly resembling those which had
attended the death of Mad