“With Antragues?”

“On the contrary, he killed a lackey of Quelus’s.”

“Oh!” murmured the king, “here is a civil war lighted up.”

Quelus started. “It is true,” said he.

“Ah,” said Chicot. “You begin to perceive it, do you?”

“But, M. Chicot, you cried with us, ‘Death to the Angevins!’”

“Oh! that is a different thing; I am a fool, and you are clever men.”

“Come, peace, gentlemen; we shall have enough of war soon.”

“What are your majesty’s orders?”

“That you employ the same ardor in calming the people as you have done in exciting them, and that you bring back all the Swiss, my guards, and my household, and have the doors of the Louvre closed, so that perhaps tomorrow the bourgeois may take the whole thing for a sortie of drunken people.”