LAST HOURS OF A REIGN.
A Tale in Two Parts.—Part I.
Chapter I.
"Let's see the devil's writ. What have we here?"
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"First of the King. What shall of him become?" Shakspeare.
"A pretty plot, well chosen to build upon." Idem.
It was in the month of May 1574, and in the city of Paris, that, at an hour of the night which in these days might be considered somewhat early, but which at that period was already late, two personages were seated in a gloomy room, belonging to a small and ancient hotel, at no great distance from the old palace of the Louvre, with which it was supposed to communicate by courts and passages little known and seldom used.