ounced Epernon as the chief murderer, and was arrested, examined,
accused of lunacy, proved to be perfectly sane, and, persisting in her
statements with perfect coherency, was imprisoned for life for her pains;
the Duke furiously demanding her instant execution.

The documents connected with the process were carefully suppressed. The
assassin, tortured and torn by four horses, was supposed to have revealed
nothing and to have denied the existence of accomplices.

The great accused were too omnipotent to be dealt with by humble accusers
or by convinced but powerless tribunals. The trial was all mystery,
hugger-mugger, horror. Yet the murderer is known to have dictated to the
Greflier Voisin, just before expiring on the Greve, a declaration which
that functionary took down in a handwriting perhaps purposely illegible.

Two centuries and a half have passed away, yet the illegible original
record is said to exist, to have been plainly read, and to contain the
names of the Queen and the Duke of Epernon.

Twenty-six years before, the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had destroyed the
foremost man in Europe and the chief of a commonwealth just struggling
into existence. Yet Spain and Rome, the instigators and perpetrators of
the crime, had not reaped the victory which they had the right to expect.
The young republic, guided by Barneveld and loyal to the son of the
murdered stadholder, was equal to the burthen suddenly descending upon
its shoulders. Instead of despair there had been constancy. Instead of
distracted counsels there had been heroic union of heart and hand. Rather
than bend to Rome and grovel to Philip, it had taken its sovereignty in
its hands, offered it successively, without a thought of
self-aggrandizement on the part of its children, to the crowns of France
and Great Britain, and, having been repulsed by both, had learned after
fiery trials and incredible exertions to assert its own high and foremost
place among the independent powers of the world.

And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but
unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated
France. No political revolution could be much more thorough than that
which had been accomplished in a moment of time by Francis Ravaillac.

On the 14th of May, France, while in spiritual matters obedient to the
Pope, stood at the head of the forces of Protestantism throughout Europe,
banded together to effect the downfall of the p