"How many times repeated?"
Réné counted.
"Four," said he.
"Ay, ay! I see it! that is to say, Henry IV. Oh," she cried, flinging the knife from her, "I am accursed in my posterity!"
She was terrible, that woman, pale as a corpse, lighted by the dismal taper, and clasping her bloody hands.
"He will reign!" she exclaimed with a sigh of despair; "he will reign!"
"He will reign!" repeated Réné, plunged in meditation.
Nevertheless, the gloomy expression of Catharine's face soon disappeared under the light of a thought which unfolded in the depths of her mind.
"Réné," said she, stretching out her hand toward the perfumer without lifting her head from her breast, "Réné, is there not a terrible history of a doctor at Perugia, who killed at once, by the aid of a pomade,[7] his daughter and his daughter's lover?"
"Yes, madame."