" cried another voice; and Marguerite,
breathless and impassioned, burst into the room.

"Sir," said Marguerite to Henry, "your last words were an accusation,
and were both right and wrong. They have made me the means for
attempting to destroy you, but I was ignorant that in marrying me you
were going to destruction. I myself owe my life to chance, for this very
night they all but killed me in seeking you. Directly I knew of your
danger I sought you. If you are exiled, sir, I will be exiled too; if
they imprison you they shall imprison me also; if they kill you, I will
also die!"

She gave her hand to her husband and he seized it eagerly.

"Brother," cried Marguerite to Charles IX., "remember, you made him my
husband!"

"Faith, Margot is right, and Henry is my brother-in-law," said the king.

_II.--The Boar Hunt_

As time went on, if Catherine's hatred of Henry of Navarre did not
diminish, Charles IX. certainly became more friendly.

Catherine was for ever intriguing and plotting for the fortune of her
sons and the downfall of her son-in-law, but Henry always managed to
evade the webs she wove. At a certain boar-hunt Charles was indebted to
Henry for his life.

It was at the time when the king's brother D'Anjou had accepted the
crown of Poland, and the second brother, D'Alencon, a weak-minded,
ambitious man, was secretly hoping for a crown somewhere, that Henry
paid his debt for the king's mercy to him on the night of St.
Bartholomew.

Charles was an intrepid hunter, but the boar had swerved as the king's
spear was aimed at him, and, maddened with rage, the animal had rushed
at him. Charles tried to draw his hunting-knife but the sheath was so
tight it was impossible.

"The boar! the boar!" shouted the king. "Help, D'Alencon, help!"

D'Alencon was ghastly white as he placed his arquebuse to his shoulder
and fired. The ball, instead of hitting the boar, felled the king's
horse.

"I think," D'Alencon murmured to himself, "that D'Anjou is King of
France, and I King of Poland."

The boar's tusk had indeed grazed the king's thigh when a hand in an
iron glove dashed itself against the mouth of the beast, and a knife was
plunged into its shoulder.

Charles rose with difficulty, and seemed for a moment as if about to
fall by the dead boar. Then he looked at Henry of Navarre, and for the
first time in four-and-twenty years his heart was touched.

"Thanks, Harry!" he said. "D'Alencon, for a first-rate mark