ck and forth made a great and terrible confusion
in the galleries.

Marguerite, however, went boldly on until she reached the queen mother's
antechamber. But this room was guarded by a double file of soldiers, who
allowed only those who had a certain countersign to enter. Marguerite in
vain tried to pass this living barrier; several times she saw the door
open and shut, and each time she saw Catharine, her youth restored by
action, as alert as if she were only twenty years of age, writing,
receiving letters, opening them, addressing a word to one, a smile to
another; and those on whom she smiled most graciously were those who
were the most covered with dust and blood.

Amid this vast tumult which reigned in the Louvre and filled it with
frightful clamors, could be heard the rattling of musketry more and more
insistently repeated.

"I shall never get to her," said Marguerite to herself after she had
made three ineffectual attempts to pass the halberdiers. "Rather than
waste my time here, I must go and find my brother."

At this moment M. de Guise passed; he had just informed the queen of the
murder of the admiral, and was returning to the butchery.

"Oh, Henry!" cried Marguerite, "where is the King of Navarre?"

The duke looked at her with a smile of astonishment, bowed, and without
any reply passed out with his guards.

Marguerite ran to a captain who was on the point of leaving the Louvre
and was engaged in having his men's arquebuses loaded.

"The King of Navarre!" she exclaimed; "sir, where is the King of
Navarre?"

"I do not know, madame," replied the captain, "I do not belong to his
majesty's guards."

"Ah, my dear Rene," said the queen, recognizing Catharine's perfumer,
"is that you?--you have just left my mother. Do you know what has become
of my husband?"

"His majesty the King of Navarre is no friend of mine, madame, you ought
to remember that. It is even said," he added, with a contraction of his
features more like a grimace than a smile, "it is even said that he
ventures to accuse me of having been the accomplice, with Madame
Catharine, in poisoning his mother."

"No, no!" cried Marguerite, "my good Rene, do not believe that!"

"Oh, it is of little consequence, madame!" said the perfumer; "neither
the King of Navarre nor his party is any longer to be feared!"

And he turned his back on Marguerite.

"Ah, Monsieur de Tavannes!" cried Marguerite, "one word, I beseech you!"

Tavannes, who was