D’Auvergne rushes forward. The pages and gentlemen in attendance, the guards outside, and Monsieur de la Guesle, who is waiting for an audience, all burst into the room.
The King is lying back in the arm-chair; a pool of blood stains the floor from a deep wound; Jacques Clément still stands immovable before him. Swords flash in the air; some fly to support the dying monarch, some to raise an alarm over the palace; others, transported with fury, fall upon the monk, who offers no resistance. He is speedily despatched. Osman, hearing the uproar, enters. “What!” cries he, “is the King dead?”
“Not quite,” is the reply.
“Who did it?”
“Sainte Marie!” groans the astrologer, wringing his hands, “if you had listened to me this would never have happened. Did I not say there was blood on that monk? Did I not say that the star of the House of Valois had fallen? Alas! alas! If you had but listened!”
At this moment M. d’O and the Comte d’Auvergne leave the King’s room to send for a surgeon.
“Why did you kill the assassin? We might have tortured him, and discovered his accomplices,” says M. d’O, while they await the messenger whom they had despatched.
“I did not kill him,” answered the Comte d’Auvergne. The King was seated when he entered, and, taking the wretch’s papers in his hands, was busy reading them. M. Clermont and I were present, but had retired a little to leave his Majesty more at liberty. As he rose from his seat and was addressing the monk, the traitor drew a dagger from his sleeve and plunged it into the King’s stomach. The King cried out, “Kill him—he has killed me!” and, drawing forth the dagger from the wound, gave two or three cuts at the assassin, and then fell. We rushed to his aid, and smote the fellow, who was unarmed, right and left. At the noise, the doors burst open, and the gentlemen and pages in their rage finished him with a hundred blows. Seeing that he was dead, I ordered him to be stripped and thrown out of the window, in order to be recognised if possible.”
“What does it matter who recognises him?” answers M. d’O. “Have the papers that he showed the King disappeared also?”