hen your thoughts ran too fast, Pierre. Mademoiselle de Valecourt
is a great heiress; and the count should, of course, give her in
marriage to one of his own rank."

Pierre shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly.

"Your honour is doubtless right," he said humbly; "and therefore,
seeing that she has her father and Monsieur de Pascal to protect
her, we need not trouble more about those articles of attire stowed
away on the roof above; but shall be able to concern ourselves
solely with our own safety, which puts a much better complexion on
the affair."

"The whole matter is ridiculous, Pierre," Philip said angrily, "and
I am a fool to have listened to you. There, go and see about
breakfast, or I shall lose my patience with you, altogether."

There were several consultations, during the day, between the
leading Huguenots. There was no apparent ground for suspicion that
the attack upon the Admiral had been a part of any general plot,
and it was believed that it was but the outcome of the animosity of
the Guises, and the queen mother, against a man who had long
withstood them, who was now higher than themselves in the king's
confidence, and who had persuaded him to undertake an enterprise
that would range France on the side of the Protestant powers. The
balance of evidence is all in favour of the truth of this
supposition, and to the effect that it was only upon the failure of
their scheme, against the Admiral, that the conspirators determined
upon a general massacre of the Huguenots.

They worked upon the weak king's mind, until they persuaded him
that Coligny was at the head of a plot against himself; and that
nothing short of his death, and those of his followers, could
procure peace and quiet for France. At last, in a sudden access of
fury, Charles not only ranged himself on their side, but astonished
Catharine, Anjou, and their companions by going even farther than
they had done, and declaring that every Huguenot should be killed.
This sudden change, and his subsequent conduct during the few
months that remained to him of life, seem to point to the fact that
this fresh access of trouble shattered his weak brain, and that he
was not fairly responsible for the events that followed--the guilt
of which rests wholly upon Catharine de Medici, Henry of Anjou, and
the leaders of the party of the Guises.

Philip spent a considerable portion of the day at the Louvre with
Henry of Navarre, Francois de Laville, and a fe