. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Catherine, listening breathlessly, hears the council assembling. Heavy footsteps are passing backwards and forwards through the guard-room overhead to the royal gallery where the council is to meet. Then all is hushed, and the face of the dying queen flushes with hope, and her hands clasp themselves in prayer, if, perchance, at the last moment Henry has relented and listened to her entreaties to spare the Duke.
A moment after a door closes violently. She hears a single footstep—a powerful and firm footstep. It crosses the floor. Then came loud tramplings, as of a rush of armed men, a clash of weapons, a fall as of a heavy body; then a terrible cry—
“À moi, mes amis!—trahison!—à moi, Guise,—je me meurs.”
The dying woman knows that all is over; she sinks back on her bed raving in delirium. In a few days she was dead.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE LAST OF THE VALOIS.
WE are at Saint-Cloud. The time, the wars of the League. At the head of the Leaguers is the Duc de Mayenne, only living brother of the Guises. Henry III. commands the royal forces. With him is Henry of Navarre. Since the Queen-mother’s death the King of France has become reconciled to his brother-in-law. He shows himself almost a hero. They are both defending the Crown to which Mayenne aspires. Eight months have passed since the murder of the Balafré. That treacherous deed has done the King no good; Mayenne lives to avenge his brother’s death, and the Catholic party is still more alienated from the King since he has called a heretic into his councils. The royal troops are lying encamped among the hilly woodlands of the park towards Ville d’Avray and Meudon, then, as now, pleasant to the eye.
On the 1st August, 1589, Henry sat in the long gallery of the palace (until lately lined with pictures and gorgeously decorated), playing at cards with his attendants. He holds himself so upright, that he moves neither his head nor his feet, and his hands as little as possible. A hood hangs upon his shoulders; a little cap, with a flower stuck in it, is placed over one ear; round his neck, suspended by a broad blue ribbon, is a basket of gold wickerwork, full of little puppies.
Monsieur d’O, Seigneur of Fiesnes and Maillebois, first gentleman of the bed-chamber, and Governor of Paris, has been joking him about the predictions of an astrologer, named Osman, who has arrived that evening at Saint-Cloud in company with some noblemen.
“By our Ladye-mother! let us have him in and hear what he can say,” cries the King. “These fellows are diverting. I will question him myself.”