"Then I will go to my brother Charles, and I will speak to him."
"Go, madame, go," said Charlotte, leaving Marguerite room to pass, "and may God guide your majesty!"
Marguerite darted down the corridor, but when she reached the end of it she turned to make sure that Madame de Sauve was not lingering behind. Madame de Sauve was following her.
The Queen of Navarre saw her go upstairs to her own apartment, and then she herself went toward the queen's chamber.
All was changed here. Instead of the crowd of eager courtiers, who usually opened their ranks before the queen and respectfully saluted her, Marguerite met only guards with red partisans and garments stained with blood, or gentlemen in torn cloaks,—their faces blackened with powder, bearing orders and despatches,—some going in, others going out, and all this movement back 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?"