ood boiled and my heart ached at what was going forward.

Presently a man wearing a corslet and waving a sword dyed red with blood
appeared at the window of the sick-room. "It is done, my lord!" cried
he lustily, "it is all over."

"Where is the body?" asked Guise brutally. "Monseigneur d'Angouleme will
not believe unless he sees the body."

I was beside myself with grief and passion; yet even at that awful
moment I gripped Felix tightly, bidding him control himself. "We must
live, and not die!" I whispered.

Behm, and Cosseins, and a trooper in the dark green and white uniform of
Anjou's guard approached the window, half dragging, half carrying a
lifeless body. Raising it up, they flung it, as if it were the carcase
of a sheep, into the courtyard, Behm exclaiming, "There is your enemy;
he can do little harm now!"

"Yes, it is he," said Guise, spurning the dead hero with his foot, "I
know him well. We have made a good beginning, my men; let us finish the
business. Forward, in the king's name!"

Our cry of agony was drowned by the shouting of the troopers, and the
next moment we were swept with the rest of the crowd from the courtyard
into the narrow street. Suddenly, as if it were a signal, the great bell
of St. Germain l'Auxerrois began to toll; other bells in the
neighbourhood clanged and clashed, and mingling with their sounds were
the fierce cries of "Kill the Huguenots! Kill! Kill!"

Felix turned to me with a look of horror. "It is a planned massacre!" he
exclaimed, "our comrades will be murdered in their beds!"

We were borne along helplessly in the midst of the crowd. In all the
world, I think, no one could have ever beheld a more fearful spectacle.
The men and women were mad with passion; their faces were as the faces
of fiends; already some of their weapons were wet with blood. Each had a
white band bound round the arm, and most of them wore a white cross in
their caps.

Guise and Angouleme rode off with their troopers to carry on the
terrible work elsewhere, and they bade the citizens slay and spare not.
Crash went the doors of the houses where the Huguenots lived; shrieks of
despair and cries of "Kill! Kill!" rose on the air; the glare of
numerous torches lit up the hideous scene.

"Drag them out!"

"Death to the Huguenots!"

"Burn the houses!"

"Long live the Duke of Guise!"

"Throw them from the windows!"

"Kill the whole brood!"

Very soon the street was dotted with dead bodies. The un