the duke's door,
bade him hurry, for the king wanted him. The story is trite enough now.
When I heard it first in the inn on the Clain, it was all new and all
marvellous.

The monk, too, telling the story as if he had seen the events with his
own eyes, omitted nothing which might impress his hearers. He told us
how the duke received warning after warning, and answered in the very
antechamber, 'He dare not!' How his blood, mysteriously advised of
coming dissolution, grew chill, and his eye, wounded at Chateau Thierry,
began to run, so that he had to send for the handkerchief he had
forgotten to bring. He told us, even, how the duke drew his assassins up
and down the chamber, how he cried for mercy, and how he died at last
at the foot of the king's bed, and how the king, who had never dared to
face him living, came and spurned him dead!

There were pale faces round the fire when he ceased, and bent brows
and lips hard pressed together. Then he stood and cursed the King of
France--cursing him openly by the name of Henry of Valois, a thing I
had never looked to hear in France--though no one said 'Amen,' and all
glanced over their shoulders, and our host pattered from the room as if
he had seen a ghost, it seemed to be no man's duty to gainsay him.

For myself, I was full of thoughts which it would have been unsafe to
utter in that company or so near the Loire. I looked back sixteen years.
Who but Henry of Guise had spurned the corpse of Coligny? And who but
Henry of Valois had backed him in the act? Who but Henry of Guise had
drenched Paris with blood, and who but Henry of Valois had ridden by
his side? One 23rd of the month--a day never to be erased from France's
annals--had purchased for him a term of greatness. A second 23rd saw
him, pay the price--saw his ashes cast secretly and by night no man
knows where!

Moved by such thoughts, and observing that the priest was going the
round of the company collecting money for masses for the duke's soul,
to which object I could neither give with a good conscience nor refuse
without exciting suspicion, I slipped out; and finding a man of decent
appearance talking with the landlord in a small room beside the kitchen,
I called for a flask of the best wine, and by means of that introduction
obtained my supper in their company.

The stranger was a Norman horsedealer, returning home, after disposing
of his string. He seemed to be in a large way of business, and being of
a bluff,