Presently a man wearing a corslet and waving a sword dyed red with blood appeared at the window of the sick-room. "It is done, my lord!" cried he lustily, "it is all over."
"Where is the body?" asked Guise brutally. "Monseigneur d'Angoulême will not believe unless he sees the body."
I was beside myself with grief and passion; yet even at that awful moment I gripped Felix tightly, bidding him control himself. "We must live, and not die!" I whispered.
Behm, and Cosseins, and a trooper in the dark green and white uniform of Anjou's guard approached the window, half dragging, half carrying a lifeless body. Raising it up, they flung it, as if it were the carcase of a sheep, into the courtyard, Behm exclaiming, "There is your enemy; he can do little harm now!"
"Yes, it is he," said Guise, spurning the dead hero with his foot, "I know him well. We have made a good beginning, my men; let us finish the business. Forward, in the king's name!"
Our cry of agony was drowned by the shouting of the troopers, and the next moment we were swept with the rest of the crowd from the courtyard into the narrow street. Suddenly, as if it were a signal, the great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois began to toll; other bells in the neighbourhood clanged and clashed, and mingling with their sounds were the fierce cries of "Kill the Huguenots! Kill! Kill!"
Felix turned to me with a look of horror. "It is a planned massacre!" he exclaimed, "our comrades will be murdered in their beds!"
We were borne along helplessly in the midst of the crowd. In all the world, I think, no one could have ever beheld a more fearful spectacle. The men and women were mad with passion; their faces were as the faces of fiends; already some of their weapons were wet with blood. Each had a white band bound round the arm, and most of them wore a white cross in their caps.
Guise and Angoulême rode off with their troopers to carry on the terrible work elsewhere, and they bade the citizens slay and spare not. Crash went the doors of the houses where the Huguenots lived; shrieks of despair and cries of "Kill! Kill!" rose on the air; the glare of numerous torches lit up the hideous scene.
"Drag them out!"