aten it he was called to Lord Walwyn
to supply the further account which Humfley had been unable to give. He
had waited, he explained, with a lackey, a friend of his in the palace,
till he became alarmed by the influx of armed men, wearing white crosses
and shirt-sleeves on their left arms, but his friend had assured him
that his master had been summoned to the royal bedchamber, where he
would be as safe as in church; and obtaining from Landry Osbert himself
a perfectly true assurance of being a good Catholic, had supplied him
with the badges that were needful for security. It was just then that
Madame's maid crept down to his waiting-place with the intelligence that
her mistress had been bolted in, and after a short consultation they
agreed to go and see whether M. le Baron were indeed waiting, and, if
he were, to warn him of the suspicious state of the lower regions of the
palace.

They were just in time to see, but not to prevent the attack upon their
young master; and while Veronique fled, screaming, Landry Osbert, who
had been thrown back on the stairs in her sudden flight, recovered
himself and hastened to his master. The murderers, after their blows
had been struck, had hurried along the corridor to join the body of
assassins, whose work they had in effect somewhat anticipated.
Landry, full of rage and despair, was resolved at least to save his
foster-brother's corpse from further insult, and bore it down-stairs in
his arms. On the way, he perceived that life was not yet extinct, and
resolving to become doubly cautious, he sought in the pocket for the
purse that had been well filled for the flight, and by the persuasive
argument of gold crowns, obtained egress from the door-keeper of the
postern, where Berenger hoped to have emerged in a far different manner.
It was a favourable moment, for the main body of the murderers were at
that time being poster in the court by the captain of the guard, ready
to massacre the gentlemen of the King of Navarre's suite, and he was
therefore unmolested by any claimant of the plunders of the apparent
corpse he bore on his shoulders. The citizens of Paris who had been
engaged in their share of the murders for more than an hour before the
tragedy began in the Louvre, frequently beset him on his way to the
quay, and but for the timely aid of his English comrades, he would
hardly have brought off his foster-brother safely.

The pass with which King Charles had provided Berenger for