The Duke fell on his knees. The eight Gascons precipitated themselves upon the man who had been deemed, and who had deemed himself, the most invincible of the sons of men.
So strong was he that, even in death, he dragged them all after him, like hounds tearing at the flanks of a dying tiger, till, with a cry of "Oh, my friends—oh, what treachery! My sins——" the breath of life went from him. And he fell prone, still clutching in his agony the foot of the King's bed.
Then the turbaned, weasel face, pale and ghastly, jerked out of the royal closet, and the quavering voice of the King asked Guise's own question of sixteen years before—"Have you finished the work? Is he dead?"
Being assured that his enemy was indeed dead, Henry at last came out, standing over the body of the great Leaguer, holding back the skirts of his dressing-gown with his hand.
"Ah, but he is big!" he said, and spurned him with his foot. Then he put his hands on his brow, as if for a moment to hide the sight, or perhaps to commune with himself. Suddenly he thrust out an arm and called the man-slayers about him.
"Ye are my hands and arms," he said; "I shall not forget that you have done this for my sake."
"Not I!" said Jean-aux-Choux promptly. "I have done it for the sake of Coligny, whom he murdered even so. His blood—my master's blood—has called a long while from the ground. And so"—looking straight at the King—"perish all those who put their hands to the slaughter of the Bartholomew night."
Then King Henry of Valois abased his eyes, and men could hear his teeth chatter in his head. For, indeed, he and Catherine, his mother—the same who now lay a-dying in the chamber below—had guided, with foxy cunning and Italianate guile, that deadly conjuration.
He was, however, too much elated to be long subdued.
"At any rate," he said, "Guise is dead. I am avenged upon mine enemy. Guise is dead! But some others yet live."