“Forces me?” roared the King, half rising, his eyes aflash. “That is a very daring word.”
“It would be if the proof were absent. Remember, Sire, his very speech to you before you permitted him to embark upon preparations for this war. 'Give us leave,' he said, 'to make war in Flanders, or we shall be compelled to make war upon yourself.'”
The King winced and turned livid. Sweat stood in beads upon his brow. He was touched in his most sensitive spot. That speech of Coligny's was of all things the one he most desired to forget. He twisted the chaplet so that the beads bit deeply into his fingers.
“Sire,” Tavannes continued, “were I a king, and did a subject so address me, I should have his head within the hour. Yet worse has happened since, worse is happening now. The Huguenots are arming. They ride arrogantly through the streets of your capital, stirring up rebellion. They are here in force, and the danger grows acute and imminent.”
Charles writhed before them. He mopped his brow with a shaking hand.
“The danger—yes. I see that. I admit the danger. But Coligny—”
“Is it to be King Gaspard or King Charles?” rasped the voice of Catherine.
The chaplet snapped suddenly in the King's fingers. He sprang to his feet, deathly pale.
“So be it!” he cried. “Since it is necessary to kill the Admiral, kill him, then. Kill him!” he screamed, in a fury that seemed aimed at those who forced this course upon him. “Kill him—but see to it also that at the same time you kill every Huguenot in France, so that not one shall be left to reproach me. Not one, do you hear? Take your measures and let the thing be done at once.” And on that, his face livid and twitching, his limbs shaking, he flung out of the room and left them.
It was all the warrant they required, and they set to work at once there in the King's own cabinet, where he had left them. Guise, who had hitherto been no more than a silent spectator, assumed now the most active part. Upon his own shoulders he took the charge of seeing the Admiral done to death.