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+Project Gutenberg's Historical Nights' Entertainment, by Sabatini
+#5 in our series by Rafael Sabatini
+
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+The Historical Nights' Entertainment
+
+Author:  Rafael Sabatini
+
+May, 2001  [Etext #2636]
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Historical Nights' Entertainment, by Sabatini
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
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+
+The Historical Nights' Entertainment
+
+by Rafael Sabatini
+
+
+
+
+First Series
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In approaching "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" I set myself
+the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and
+with all the colour available from surviving records, a group of
+more or less famous events.  I would select for my purpose those
+which were in themselves bizarre and resulting from the interplay
+of human passions, and whilst relating each of these events in the
+form of a story, I would compel that story scrupulously to follow
+the actual, recorded facts without owing anything to fiction, and
+I would draw upon my imagination, if at all, merely as one might
+employ colour to fill in the outlines which history leaves grey,
+taking care that my colour should be as true to nature as possible.
+For dialogue I would depend upon such scraps of actual speech as
+were chronicled in each case, amplifying it by translating into
+terms of speech the paraphrases of contemporary chroniclers.
+
+Such was the task I set myself.  I am aware that it has been
+attempted once or twice already, beginning, perhaps, with the
+"Crimes Celebres" of Alexandre Dumas.  I am not aware that the
+attempt has ever succeeded.  This is not to say that I claim
+success in the essays that follow.  How nearly I may have
+approached success -judged by the standard I had set myself - how
+far I may have fallen short, my readers will discern.  I am
+conscious, however, of having in the main dutifully resisted the
+temptation to take the easier road, to break away from restricting
+fact for the sake of achieving a more intriguing narrative.  In one
+instance, however, I have quite deliberately failed, and in some
+others I have permitted myself certain speculations to resolve
+mysteries of which no explanation has been discovered.  Of these it
+is necessary that I should make a full confession.
+
+My deliberate failure is "The Night of Nuptials."  I discovered an
+allusion to the case of Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt in
+Macaulay's "History of England" - quoted from an old number of the
+"Spectator" - whilst I was working upon the case of Lady Alice Lisle.
+There a similar episode is mentioned as being related of Colonel
+Kirke, but discredited because known for a story that has a trick
+of springing up to attach itself to unscrupulous captains.  I set
+out to track it to its source, and having found its first appearance
+to be in connection with Charles the Bold's German captain Rhynsault,
+I attempted to reconstruct the event as it might have happened,
+setting it at least in surroundings of solid fact.
+
+My most flagrant speculation occurs in "The Night of Hate."  But in
+defence of it I can honestly say that it is at least no more flagrant
+than the speculations on this subject that have become enshrined in
+history as facts.  In other words, I claim for my reconstruction of
+the circumstances attending the mysterious death of Giovanni Borgia,
+Duke of Gandia, that it no more lacks historical authority than do
+any other of the explanatory narratives adopted by history to assign
+the guilt to Gandia's brother, Cesare Borgia.
+
+In the "Cambridge Modern History" our most authoritative writers on
+this epoch have definitely pronounced that there is no evidence
+acceptable to historians to support the view current for four
+centuries that Cesare Borgia was the murderer.
+
+Elsewhere I have dealt with this at length.  Here let it suffice to
+say that it was not until nine months after the deed that the name
+of Cesare Borgia was first associated with it; that public opinion
+had in the mean time assigned the guilt to a half-dozen others in
+succession; that no motive for the crime is discoverable in the case
+of Cesare; that the motives advanced will not bear examination, and
+that they bear on the face of them the stamp of having been put
+forward hastily to support an accusation unscrupulously political in
+purpose; that the first men accused by the popular voice were the
+Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Ascanio Sforza and his nephew Giovanni
+Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro; and, finally, that in Matarazzo's
+"Chronicles of Perugia" there is a fairly detailed account of how
+the murder was perpetrated by the latter.
+
+Matarazzo, I confess, is worthy of no more credit than any other of
+the contemporary reporters of common gossip.  But at least he is
+worthy of no less.  And it is undeniable that in Sforza's case a
+strong motive for the murder was not lacking.
+
+My narrative in "The Night of Hate" is admittedly a purely
+theoretical account of the crime.  But it is closely based upon all
+the known facts of incidence and of character; and if there is
+nothing in the surviving records that will absolutely support it,
+neither is there anything that can absolutely refute it.
+
+In "The Night of Masquerade" I am guilty of quite arbitrarily
+discovering a reason to explain the mystery of Baron Bjelke's sudden
+change from the devoted friend and servant of Gustavus III of Sweden
+into his most bitter enemy.  That speculation is quite indefensible,
+although affording a possible explanation of that mystery.  In the
+case of "The Night of Kirk o' Field," on the other hand, I do not
+think any apology is necessary for my reconstruction of the precise
+manner in which Darnley met his death.  The event has long been
+looked upon as one of the mysteries of history - the mystery lying
+in the fact that whilst the house at Kirk o' Field was destroyed by
+an explosion, Darnley's body was found at some distance away,
+together with that of his page, bearing every evidence of death by
+strangulation.  The explanation I adopt seems to me to owe little
+to speculation.
+
+In the story of Antonio Perez - "The Night of Betrayal" - I have
+permitted myself fewer liberties with actual facts than might appear.
+I have closely followed his own "Relacion," which, whilst admittedly
+a piece of special pleading, must remain the most authoritative
+document of the events with which it deals.  All that I have done
+has been to reverse the values as Perez presents them, throwing the
+personal elements into higher relief than the political ones, and
+laying particular stress upon the matter of his relations with the
+Princess of Eboli.  "The Night of Betrayal" is presented in the form
+of a story within a story.  Of the containing story let me say that
+whilst to some extent it is fictitious, it is by no means entirely so.
+There is enough to justify most of it in the "Relaciori" itself.
+
+The exceptions mentioned being made, I hope it may be found that I
+have adhered rigorously to my purpose of owing nothing to invention
+in my attempt to flesh and clothe these few bones of history.
+
+I should add, perhaps, that where authorities differ as to motives,
+where there is a conflict of evidence as to the facts themselves,
+or where the facts admit of more than one interpretation, I have
+permitted myself to be selective, and confined myself to a point
+of view adopted at the outset.
+                                                         R.  S.
+LONDON, August, I9I7
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I.  THE NIGHT OF HOLYROOD
+        The Murder of David Rizzio
+
+II.  THE NIGHT OF KIRK O' FIELD
+        The Murder of Darnley
+
+III.  THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL
+        Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain
+
+IV.  THE NIGHT OF CHARITY
+        The Case of the Lady Alice Lisle
+
+V.  THE NIGHT OF MASSACRE
+        The Story of the Saint Bartholomew
+
+VI.  THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT
+        Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan
+
+VII.  THE NIGHT OF GEMS
+        The Affaire of the Queen's Necklace
+
+VIII.  THE NIGHT OF TERROR
+        The Drownings at Nantes under Carrier
+
+IX.  THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS
+        Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt
+
+X.  THE NIGHT OF STRANGLERS
+        Giovanna of Naples and Andreas of Hungary
+
+XI.  THE NIGHT OF HATE
+        The Murder of the Duke of Gandia
+
+XII.  THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE
+     Casanova's Escape from the Piombi
+
+XIII.  THE NIGHT OF MASQUERADE
+     The Assassination of Gustavus III of Sweden
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I.   THE NIGHT OF HOLYROOD
+          The Murder of David Rizzio
+
+The tragedy of my Lord Darnley's life lay in the fact that he was
+a man born out of his proper station - a clown destined to kingship
+by the accident of birth and fortune.  By the blood royal flowing
+in his veins, he could, failing others, have claimed succession to
+both the English and the Scottish thrones, whilst by his marriage
+with Mary Stuart he made a definite attempt to possess himself of
+that of Scotland.
+
+The Queen of Scots, enamoured for a season of the clean-limbed grace
+and almost feminine beauty ("ladyfaced," Melville had called him
+once) of this "long lad of nineteen" who came a-wooing her, had soon
+discovered, in matrimony, his vain, debauched, shiftless, and
+cowardly nature.  She had married him in July of 1565, and by
+Michaelmas she had come to know him for just a lovely husk of a man,
+empty of heart or brain; and the knowledge transmuted affection into
+contempt.
+
+Her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, had opposed the marriage,
+chiefly upon the grounds that Darnley was a Catholic, and with
+Argyll, Chatellerault, Glencairn, and a host of other Protestant
+lords, had risen in arms against his sovereign and her consort.  But
+Mary had chased her rebel brother and his fellows over the border
+into England, and by this very action, taken for the sake of her
+worthless husband, she sowed the first seeds of discord between
+herself and him.  It happened that stout service had been rendered
+her in this affair by the arrogant border ruffian, the Earl of
+Bothwell.  Partly to reward him, partly because of the confidence
+with which he inspired her, she bestowed upon him the office of
+Lieutenant-General of the East, Middle, and West Marches - an office
+which Darnley had sought for his father, Lennox.  That was the first
+and last concerted action of the royal couple.  Estrangement grew
+thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did
+Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet - for the Queen had
+still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown
+matrimonial - begin to dwindle.
+
+At first it had been "the King and Queen," or "His Majesty and Hers";
+but by Christmas - five months after the wedding - Darnley was known
+simply as "the Queen's husband," and in all documents the Queen's
+name now took precedence of his, whilst coins bearing their two
+heads, and the legend "Hen. et Maria," were called in and substituted
+by a new coinage relegating him to the second place.
+
+Deeply affronted, and seeking anywhere but in himself and his own
+shortcomings the cause of the Queen's now manifest hostility, he
+presently conceived that he had found it in the influence exerted
+upon her by the Seigneur Davie - that Piedmontese, David Rizzio,
+who had come to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a
+starveling minstrel in the train of Monsieur de Morette, the
+ambassador of Savoy.
+
+It was Rizzio's skill upon the rebec that had first attracted Mary's
+attention.  Later he had become her secretary for French affairs
+ and the young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of
+France, grew attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth
+and turbulent land over which a harsh destiny ordained that she
+should rule.  Using his opportunities and his subtle Italian
+intelligence, he had advanced so rapidly that soon there was no man
+in Scotland who stood higher with the Queen.  When Maitland of
+Lethington was dismissed under suspicion of favouring the exiled
+Protestant lords, the Seigneur Davie succeeded him as her secretary;
+and now that Morton was under the same suspicion, it was openly said
+that the Seigneur Davie would be made chancellor in his stead.
+
+Thus the Seigneur Davie was become the most powerful man in Scotland,
+and it is not to be dreamt that a dour, stiff-necked nobility would
+suffer it without demur.  They intrigued against him, putting it
+abroad, amongst other things, that this foreign upstart was an
+emissary, of the Pope's, scheming to overthrow the Protestant
+religion in Scotland.  But in the duel that followed their blunt
+Scotch wits were no match for his Italian subtlety.  Intrigue as
+they might his power remained unshaken.  And then, at last it began
+to be whispered that he owed his high favour with the beautiful
+young Queen to other than his secretarial abilities, so that Bedford
+wrote to Cecil:
+
+"What countenance the Queen shows David I will not write, for the
+honour due to the person of a queen."
+
+This bruit found credit - indeed, there have been ever since those
+who have believed it - and, as it spread, it reached the ears of
+Darnley.  Because it afforded him an explanation of the Queen's
+hostility, since he was without the introspection that would have
+discovered the true explanation in his own shortcomings, he flung
+it as so much fuel upon the seething fires of his rancour, and
+became the most implacable of those who sought the ruin of Rizzio.
+
+He sent for Ruthven, the friend of Murray and the exiled lords -
+exiled, remember, on Darnley's own account - and offered to procure
+the reinstatement of those outlaws if they would avenge his honour
+and make him King of Scots in something more than name.
+
+Ruthven, sick of a mortal illness, having risen from a bed of pain
+to come in answer to that summons, listened dourly to the frothing
+speeches of that silly, lovely boy.
+
+"No doubt you'll be right about yon fellow Davie," he agreed
+sombrely, and purposely he added things that must have outraged
+Darnley's every feeling as king and as husband.  Then he stated the
+terms on which Darnley might count upon his aid.
+
+"Early next month Parliament is to meet over the business of a Bill
+of Attainder against Murray and his friends, declaring them by their
+rebellion to have forfeited life, land, and goods.  Ye can see the
+power with her o' this foreign fiddler, that it drives her so to
+attaint her own brother.  Murray has ever hated Davie, knowing too
+much of what lies 'twixt the Queen and him to her dishonour, and
+Master Davie thinks so to make an end of Murray and his hatred."
+
+Darnley clenched teeth and hands, tortured by the craftily
+administered poison.
+
+"What then? What is to do?" he cried,
+
+Ruthven told him bluntly.
+
+"That Bill must never pass.  Parliament must never meet to pass it.
+You are Her Grace's husband and King of Scots."
+
+"In name!" sneered Darnley bitterly.
+
+"The name will serve," said Ruthven.  "In that name ye'll sign me a
+bond of formal remission to Murray and his friends for all their
+actions and quarrels, permitting their safe return to Scotland, and
+charging the lieges to convoy them safely.  Do that and leave the
+rest to us."
+
+If Darnley hesitated at all, it was not because he perceived the
+irony of the situation - that he himself, in secret opposition to
+the Queen, should sign the pardon of those who had rebelled against
+her precisely because she had taken him to husband.  He hesitated
+because indecision was inherent in his nature.
+
+"And then?" he asked at last.
+
+Ruthven's blood-injected eyes considered him stonily out of a livid,
+gleaming face.
+
+"Then, whether you reign with her or without her, reign you shall
+as King o' Scots.  I pledge myself to that, and I pledge those
+others, so that we have the bond."
+
+Darnley sat down to sign the death warrant of the Seigneur Davie.
+
+It was the night of Saturday, the 9th of March,
+
+ A fire of pine logs burned fragrantly on the hearth of the small
+closet adjoining the Queen's chamber, suffusing it with a sense of
+comfort, the greater by contrast with the cheerlessness out of doors,
+where an easterly wind swept down from Arthur's Seat and moaned its
+dismal way over a snowclad world.
+
+The lovely, golden-headed young queen supped with a little company
+of intimates: her natural sister, the Countess of Argyll, the
+Commendator of Holyrood, Beaton, the Master of the Household, Arthur
+Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, and one other - that, David Rizzio,
+who from an errant minstrel had risen to this perilous eminence, a
+man of a swarthy, ill-favoured countenance redeemed by the
+intelligence that glowed in his dark eyes, and of a body so slight
+and fragile as to seem almost misshapen.  His age was not above
+thirty, yet indifferent health, early privation, and misfortune had
+so set their mark upon him that he had all the appearance of a man
+of fifty.  He was dressed with sombre magnificence, and a jewel of
+great price smouldered upon the middle finger of one of his slender,
+delicate hands.
+
+Supper was at an end.  The Queen lounged on a long seat over against
+the tapestried wall.  The Countess of Argyll, in a tall chair on the
+Queen's left, sat with elbows on the table watching the Seigneur
+Davie's fine fingers as they plucked softly at the strings of a
+long-necked lute.  The talk, which, intimate and untrammelled, had
+lately been of the child of which Her Majesty was to be delivered
+some three months hence, was flagging now, and it was to fill the
+gap that Rizzio had taken up the lute.
+
+His harsh countenance was transfigured as he caressed the strings,
+his soul absorbed in the theme of his inspiration.  Very softly -
+indeed, no more than tentatively as yet - he was beginning one of
+those wistful airs in which his spirit survives in Scotland to this
+day, when suddenly the expectant hush was broken by a clash of
+curtain-rings.  The tapestries that masked the door had been swept
+aside, and on the threshold, unheralded, stood the tall, stripling
+figure of the young King.
+
+Darnley's appearance abruptly scattered the Italian's inspiration.
+The melody broke off sharply on the single loud note of a string
+too rudely plucked.
+
+That and the silence that followed it irked them all, conveying a
+sense that here something had been broken which never could be made
+whole again.
+
+Darnley shuffled forward.  His handsome face was pale save for the
+two burning spots upon his cheekbones, and his eyes glittered
+feveredly.  He had been drinking, so much was clear; and that he
+should seek the Queen thus, who so seldom sought her sober, angered
+those intimates who had come to share her well-founded dislike of
+him.  King though he might be in name, into such contempt was he
+fallen that not one of them rose in deference, whilst Mary herself
+watched his approach with hostile, mistrusting eyes.
+
+"What is it, my lord?" she asked him coldly, as he flung himself
+down on the settle beside her.
+
+He leered at her, put an arm about her waist, pulled her to him,
+and kissed her oafishly.
+
+None stirred.  All eyes were upon them, and all faces blank.  After
+all, he was the King and she his wife.  And then upon the silence,
+ominous as the very steps of doom, came a ponderous, clanking tread
+from the ante-room beyond.  Again the curtains were thrust aside,
+and the Countess of Argyll uttered a gasp of sudden fear at the
+grim spectre she beheld there.  It was a figure armed as for a
+tourney, in gleaming steel from head to foot, girt with a sword,
+the right hand resting upon the hilt of the heavy dagger in the
+girdle.  The helmet's vizor was raised, revealing the ghastly face
+of Ruthven - so ghastly that it must have seemed the face of a dead
+man but for the blazing life in the eyes that scanned the company.
+Those questing eyes went round the table, settled upon Rizzio, and
+seemed horribly to smile.
+
+Startled, disquieted by this apparition, the Queen half rose,
+Darnley's hindering arm still flung about her waist.
+
+"What's this?" she cried, her voice sharp.
+
+And then, as if she guessed intuitively what it might portend, she
+considered her husband with pale-faced contempt.
+
+"Judas!" she called him, flung away from his detaining arm, and
+stood forth to confront that man in steel.  "What seek ye here, my
+lord - and in this guise?" was her angry challenge.
+
+Ruthven's burning eyes fell away before her glance.  He clanked
+forward a step or two, flung out a mailed arm, and with a hand that
+shook pointed to the Seigneur Davie, who stood blankly watching him.
+
+"I seek yon man," he said gruffly.  "Let him come forth."
+
+"He is here by my will," she told him, her anger mounting.  "And so
+are not you - for which you shall be made to answer."
+
+Then to Darnley, who sat hunched on the settle:
+
+"What does this mean, sir?" she demanded.
+
+"Why - how should I know? Why - why, nothing," he faltered foolishly.
+
+"Pray God that you are right," said she, "for your own sake.  And
+you," she continued, addressing Ruthven again and waving a hand in
+imperious dismissal, "be you gone, and wait until I send for you,
+which I promise you shall be right soon."
+
+If she divined some of the evil of their purpose, if any fear
+assailed her, yet she betrayed nothing of it.  She was finely
+tempered steel.
+
+But Ruthven, sullen and menacing, stood his ground.
+
+"Let yon man come forth," he repeated.  "He has been here ower lang."
+
+"Over long?" she echoed, betrayed by her quick resentment.
+
+"Aye, ower lang for the good o' Scotland and your husband," was the
+brutal answer.
+
+Erskine, of her guards, leapt to his feet.
+
+"Will you begone, sir?" he cried; and after him came Beaton and the
+Commendator, both echoing the captain's threatening question.
+
+A smile overspread Ruthven's livid face.  The heavy dagger flashed
+from his belt.
+
+"My affair is not with any o' ye, but if ye thrust yersels too close
+upon my notice - "
+
+The Queen stepped clear of the table to intervene, lest violence
+should be done here in her presence.  Rizzio, who had risen, stood
+now beside her, watching all with a white, startled face.  And then,
+before more could be said, the curtains were torn away and half a
+score of men, whose approach had passed unnoticed, poured into the
+room.  First came Morton, the Chancellor, who was to be dispossessed
+of the great seal in Rizzio's favour.  After him followed the brutal
+Lindsay of the Byres, Kerr of Faudonside, black-browed Brunston,
+red-headed Douglas, and a half-dozen others.
+
+Confusion ensued; the three men of the Queen's household were
+instantly surrounded and overpowered.  In the brief, sharp struggle
+the table was overturned, and all would have been in darkness but
+that as the table went over the Countess of Argyll had snatched up
+the candle-branch, and stood now holding it aloft to light that
+extraordinary scene.  Rizzio, to whom the sight of Morton had been
+as the removal of his last illusion, flung himself upon his knees
+before the Queen.  Frail and feeble of body, and never a man of his
+hands, he was hopelessly unequal to the occasion.
+
+"Justice, madame!" he cried.  "Faites justice!  Sauvez ma vie!"
+
+Fearlessly, she stepped between him and the advancing horde of
+murderers, making of her body a buckler for his protection.  White
+of face, with heaving bosom and eyes like two glowing sapphires, she
+confronted them.
+
+"Back, on your lives!" she bade them.
+
+But they were lost to all sense of reverence, even to all sense of
+decency, in their blind rage against this foreign upstart who had
+trampled their Scottish vanity in the dust.  George Douglas, without
+regard for her condition either as queen or woman - and a woman
+almost upon the threshold of motherhood - clapped a pistol to her
+breast and roughly bade her stand aside.
+
+Undaunted, she looked at him with eyes that froze his trigger-finger,
+whilst behind her Rizzio grovelled in his terror, clutching her
+petticoat.  Thus, until suddenly she was seized about the waist and
+half dragged, half-lifted aside by Darnley, who at the same time
+spurned Rizzio forward with his foot.
+
+The murderers swooped down upon their prey.  Kerr of Faudonside
+flung a noose about his body, and drew it tight with a jerk that
+pulled the secretary from his knees.  Then he and Morton took the
+rope between them, and so dragged their victim across the room
+towards the door.  He struggled blindly as he went, vainly
+clutching first at an overset chair, then at a leg of the table,
+and screeching piteously the while to the Queen to save him.  And
+Mary, trembling with passion, herself struggling in the arms of
+Darnley, flung an angry warning after them.
+
+"If Davie's blood be spilt, it shall be dear blood to some of you!
+Remember that, sirs!"
+
+But they were beyond control by now, hounds unleashed upon the
+quarry of their hate.  Out of her presence Morton and Douglas
+dragged him, the rest of the baying pack going after them.  They
+dragged him, screeching still, across the ante-chamber to the head
+of the great stairs, and there they fell on him all together, and
+so wildly that they wounded one another in their fury to rend him
+into pieces.  The tattered body, gushing blood from six-and-fifty
+wounds, was hurled from top to bottom of the stairs, with a
+gold-hilted dagger - Darnley's, in token of his participation in
+the deed - still sticking in his breast.
+
+Ruthven stood forward from the group, his reeking poniard clutched
+in his right hand, a grin distorting his ghastly, vulturine face.
+Then he stalked back alone into the royal presence, dragging his
+feet a little, like a man who is weary.
+
+He found the room much as he had left it, save that the Queen had
+sunk back to her seat on the settle, and Darnley was now standing
+over her, whilst her people were still hemmed about by his own men.
+Without a "by your leave," he flung himself into a chair and called
+hoarsely for a cup of wine.
+
+Mary's white face frowned at him across the room.
+
+"You shall yet drink the wine that I shall pour you for this night's
+work, my lord, and for this insolence!  Who gave you leave to sit
+before me?"
+
+He waved a hand as if to dismiss the matter.  It may have seemed to
+him frivolous to dwell upon such a trifle amid so much.
+
+"It's no' frae lack o' respect, Your Grace," he growled, "but frae
+lack o' strength.  I am ill, and I should ha' been abed but for what
+was here to do."
+
+"Ah!" She looked at him with cold repugnance.  "What have you done
+with Davie?"
+
+He shrugged, yet his eyes quailed before her own.
+
+"He'll be out yonder," he answered, grimly evasive; and he took the
+wine one of his followers proffered him.
+
+"Go see," she bade the Countess.
+
+And the Countess, setting the candle-branch upon the buffet, went
+out, none attempting to hinder her.
+
+Then, with narrowed eyes, the Queen watched Ruthven while he drank.
+
+"It will be for the sake of Murray and his friends that you do this,"
+she said slowly.  "Tell me, my lord, what great kindness is there
+between Murray and you that, to save him from forfeiture, you run
+the risk of being forfeited with him?"
+
+"What I have done," he said, "I have done for others, and under a
+bond that shall hold me scatheless."
+
+"Under a bond?" said she, and now she looked up at Darnley, standing
+ever at her side.  "And was the bond yours, my lord?"
+
+"Mme?" He started back.  "I know naught of it."
+
+But as he moved she saw something else.  She leaned forward, pointing
+to the empty sheath at his girdle.
+
+"Where is your dagger, my lord?" she asked him sharply.
+
+"My dagger?  Ha!  How should I know?"
+
+"But I shall know!" she threatened, as if she were not virtually a
+prisoner in the hands of these violent men who had invaded her
+palace and dragged Rizzio from her side.  "I shall not rest until
+I know!"
+
+The Countess came in, white to the lips, bearing in her eyes
+something of the horror she had beheld.
+
+"What is it?" Mary asked her, her voice suddenly hushed and
+faltering.
+
+"Madame-he is dead!  Murdered!" she announced.
+
+The Queen looked at her, her face of marble.  Then her voice came
+hushed and tense:
+
+"Are - you sure?"
+
+"Myself I saw his body, madame."
+
+There was a long pause.  A low moan escaped the Queen, and her
+lovely eyes were filled with tears; slowly these coursed down her
+cheeks.  Something compelling in her grief hushed every voice, and
+the craven husband at her side shivered as her glance fell upon him
+once more.
+
+"And is it so?" she said at length, considering him.  She dried her
+eyes.  "Then farewell tears; I must study revenge."  She rose as if
+with labour, and standing, clung a moment to the table's edge.  A
+moment she looked at Ruthven, who sat glooming there, dagger in one
+hand and empty wine-cup in the other; then her glance passed on,
+and came to rest balefully on Darnley's face.  "You have had your
+will, my lord," she said, "but consider well what I now say.
+Consider and remember.  I shall never rest until I give you as sore
+a heart as I have presently."
+
+That said she staggered forward.  The Countess hastened to her, and
+leaning upon her arm, Mary passed through the little door of the
+closet into her chamber.
+
+That night the common bell was rung, and Edinburgh roused in alarm.
+Bothwell, Huntly, Atholl, and others who were at Holyrood when
+Rizzio was murdered, finding it impossible to go to the Queen's
+assistance, and fearing to share the secretary's fate - for the
+palace was a-swarm with the murderers' men-at-arms - had escaped
+by one of the windows.  The alarm they spread in Edinburgh brought
+the provost and townsmen in arms to the palace by torchlight,
+demanding to see the Queen, and refusing to depart until Darnley
+had shown himself and assured them that all was well with the Queen
+and with himself.  And what time Darnley gave them this reassurance
+from a window of her room, Mary herself stood pale and taut amid
+the brutal horde that on this alarm had violated the privacy of her
+chamber, while the ruffianly Red Douglas flashed his dagger before
+her eyes, swearing that if she made a sound they would cut her into
+collops.
+
+When at last they withdrew and left her to herself, they left her
+no illusions as to her true condition.  She was a prisoner in her
+own palace.  The ante-rooms and courts were thronged with the
+soldiers of Morton and Ruthven, the palace itself was hemmed about,
+and none might come or go save at the good pleasure of the murderers.
+
+At last Darnley grasped the authority he had coveted.  He dictated
+forthwith a proclamation which was read next morning at Edinburgh
+Market Cross - commanding that the nobles who had assembled in
+Edinburgh to compose the Parliament that was to pass the Bill of
+Attainder should quit the city within three hours, under pain of
+treason and forfeiture.
+
+And meanwhile, with poor Rizzio's last cry of "justice!" still
+ringing in her ears, Mary sat alone in her chamber, studying revenge
+as she had promised.  So that life be spared her, justice, she vowed,
+should be done - punishment not only for that barbarous deed, but
+for the very manner of the doing of it, for all the insult to which
+she had been subjected, for the monstrous violence done her feelings
+and her very person, for the present detention and peril of which
+she was full conscious.
+
+Her anger was the more intense because she never permitted it to
+diffuse itself over the several offenders.  Ruthven, who had
+insulted her so grossly; Douglas, who had offered her personal
+violence; the Laird of Faudonside, Morton, and all the others who
+held her now a helpless prisoner, she hew for no more than the
+instruments of Darnley.  It was against Darnley that all her rage
+was concentrated.  She recalled in those bitter hours all that she
+had suffered at his vile hands, and swore that at whatever cost to
+herself he should yield a full atonement.
+
+He sought her in the morning emboldened by the sovereign power he
+was usurping confident that now that he showed himself master of
+the situation she would not repine over what was done beyond recall,
+but would submit to the inevitable, be reconciled with him, and
+grant him, perforce - supported as he now was by the rebellious
+lords - the crown matrimonial and the full kingly power he coveted.
+
+But her reception of him broke that confidence into shards.
+
+"You have done me such a Wrong," she told him in a voice of cold
+hatred, that neither the recollection of our early friendship, nor
+all the hope you can give me of the future, could ever make me
+forget it.  Jamais!  Jamais je n'oublierai!" she added, and upon
+that she dismissed him so imperiously that he went at once.
+
+She sought a way to deal with him, groped blindly for it, being as
+yet but half informed of what was taking place; and whilst she
+groped, the thing she sought was suddenly thrust into her land.
+Mary Beaton, one of the few attendants left her, brought her word
+later that day that the Earl of Murray, with Rothes and some other
+of the exiled lords, was in the palace.  The news brought revelation.
+It flooded with light the tragic happening of the night before,
+showed her how Darnley was building himself a party in the state.
+It did more than that.  She recalled the erstwhile mutual hatred
+and mistrust of Murray and Darnley, and saw how it might serve her
+in this emergency.
+
+Instantly she summoned Murray to her presence with the message that
+she welcomed his return.  Yet, despite that message, he hardly
+expected - considering what lay between them - the reception that
+awaited him at her hands.
+
+She rose to receive him, her lovely eyes suffused ,with tears.  She
+embraced him, kissed him, and then, nestling to him, as if for
+comfort, her cheek against his bearded face, she allowed her tears
+to flow unchecked.
+
+"I am punished," she sobbed - "oh, I am punished!  Had I kept you
+at home, Murray, you would never have suffered men to entreat me as
+I have been entreated."
+
+Holding her to hint, he could but pat her shoulder, soothing her,
+utterly taken aback, and deeply moved, too, by this display of an
+affection for him that he had never hitherto suspected in her.
+
+"Ah, mon Dieu, Jamie, how welcome you are to one in my sorrow!"
+she continued.  "It is the fault of others that you have been so
+long out of the country.  I but require of you that you be a good
+subject to me, and you shall never find me other to you than you
+deserve."
+
+And he, shaken to the depths of his selfish soul by her tears, her
+clinging caresses, and her protestations of affection, answered
+with an oath and a sob that no better or more loyal and devoted
+subject than himself could all Scotland yield her.
+
+"And, as for this killing of Davie," he ended vehemently, "I swear
+by my soul's salvation that I have had no part in it, nor any
+knowledge of it until my return!"
+
+"I know - I know!" she moaned.  "Should I make you welcome, else?
+Be my friend, Jamie; be my friend!"
+
+He swore it readily, for he was very greedy of power, and saw the
+door of his return to it opening wider than he could have hoped.
+Then he spoke of Darnley, begging her to receive him, and hear what
+he might have to say, protesting that the King swore that he had
+not desired the murder, and that the lords had carried the matter
+out of his hands and much beyond all that he had intended.
+
+Because it suited her deep purpose, Mary consented, feigning to be
+persuaded.  She had realized that before she could deal with
+Darnley, and the rebel lords who held her a prisoner, she must first
+win free from Holyrood.
+
+Darnley came.  He was sullen now, mindful of his recent treatment,
+and in fear - notwithstanding Murray's reassurance - of further
+similar rebuffs.  She announced herself ready to hear what he might
+have to say, and she listened attentively while he spoke, her elbow
+on the carved arm of her chair, her chin in her hand.  When he had
+done, she sat long in thought, gazing out through the window at the
+grey March sky.  At length she turned and looked at him.
+
+"Do you pretend, my lord, to regret for what has passed?" she
+challenged him.
+
+"You tempt me to hypocrisy," he said.  "Yet I will be frank as at
+an Easter shrift.  Since that fellow Davie fell into credit and
+familiarity with Your Majesty, you no longer treated me nor
+entertained me after your wonted fashion, nor would you ever bear
+me company save this Davie were the third.  Can I pretend, then,
+to regret that one who deprived me of what I prized most highly
+upon earth should have been removed?  I cannot.  Yet I can and do
+proclaim my innocence of any part or share in the deed that has
+removed him."
+
+She lowered her eyes an instant, then raised them again to meet
+his own.
+
+"You had commerce with these traitor lords," she reminded him.  "It
+is by your decree that they are returned from exile.  What was your
+aim in this?"
+
+"To win back the things of which this fellow Davie had robbed me,
+a share in the ruling and the crown matrimonial that was my right,
+yet which you denied me.  That and no more.  I had not intended
+that Davie should be slain.  I had not measured the depth of their
+hatred of that upstart knave.  You see that I am frank with you."
+
+"Aye, and I believe you," she lied slowly, considering him as she
+spoke.  And he drew a breath of relief, suspecting nothing of her
+deep guile.  "And do you know why I believe you?  Because you are
+a fool."
+
+"Madame!" he cried.
+
+She rose, magnificently contemptuous.
+
+"Must I prove it?  You say that the crown matrimonial which I denied
+you is to be conferred on you by these lawless men?  Believing that,
+you signed their pardon and recall from exile.  Ha!  You do not see,
+my lord, that you are no more than their tool, their cat's-paw.  You
+do not see that they use you but for their ends, and that when they
+have done with you, they will serve you as they served poor Davie?
+No, you see none of that, which is why I call you a fool, that need
+a woman's wit to open wide your eyes."
+
+She was so vehement that she forced upon his dull wits some of the
+convictions she pretended were her own.  Yet, resisting those
+convictions, he cried out that she was at fault.
+
+"At fault?" She laughed.  "Let my memory inform your judgment.  When
+these lords, with Murray at their head, protested against our
+marriage, in what terms did they frame their protest?  They
+complained that I had set over them without consulting them one who
+had no title to it, whether by lineal descent of blood, by nature,
+or by consent of the Estates.  Consider that! They added, remember
+ - I repeat to you the very words they wrote and published - that
+while they deemed it their duty to endure under me, they deemed it
+intolerable to suffer under you."
+
+She was flushed, and her eyes gleamed with excitement.  She clutched
+his sleeve, and brought her face close to his own, looked deep and
+compellingly into his eyes as she continued:
+
+"Such was their proclamation, and they took arms against me to
+enforce it, to pull you down from the place to which I had raised
+you out of the dust.  Yet you can forget it, and in your purblind
+folly turn to these very men to right the wrongs you fancy I have
+done you.  Do you think that men, holding you in such esteem as
+that, can keep any sort of faith with you?  Do you think these are
+the men who are likely to fortify and maintain your title to the
+crown?  Ask yourself, and answer for yourself."
+
+He was white to the lips.  As much by her vehement pretence of
+sincerity as by the apparently irrefragable logic of her arguments,
+she forced conviction upon him.  This brought a loathly fear in its
+train, and the gates of his heart stood ever wide to fear.  He
+stepped aside to a chair, and sank into it, looking at her with
+dilating eyes - a fool confronted with the likely fruits of his
+folly.
+
+"Then - then - why did they proffer me their help?  How can they
+achieve their ends this way?"
+
+"How?  Do you still ask?  Do you not see what a blind tool you
+have been in their crafty hands?  In name at least you are king,
+and your signature is binding upon my subjects.  Have you not
+brought them back from exile by one royal decree, whilst by another
+you have dispersed the Parliament that was assembled to attaint
+them of treason?"
+
+She stepped close up to him, and bending ,over him as he sat there,
+crushed by realization, she lowered her voice.
+
+"Pray God, my lord, that all their purpose with you is not yet
+complete, else in their hands I do not think your life is to be
+valued at an apple-paring.  You go the ways poor Davie went."
+
+He sank his handsome head to his hands, and covered his face.  A
+while he sat huddled there, she watching him with gleaming, crafty
+eyes.  At length he rallied.  He looked up, tossing back the auburn
+hair from his white brow, still fighting, though weakly, against
+persuasion.  "It is not possible," he, cried.  "They could not!
+They could not!"
+
+She laughed, betwixt bitterness and sadness.
+
+"Trust to that," she bade him.  "Yet look well at matters as they
+are already.  I am a prisoner here in these men's hands.  They will
+not let me go until their full purpose is accomplished - perhaps,"
+she added wistfully, "perhaps not even then."
+
+"Ah, not that!" he cried out.
+
+"Even that," she answered firmly.  "But," and again she grew
+vehement, "is it less so with you?  Are you less a prisoner than I?
+D'ye think you will be suffered to come and go at will?"  She saw
+the increase of fear in him, and then she struck boldly, setting
+all upon the gamble of a guess.  "I am kept here until I shall have
+been brought to such a state that I will add my signature to your
+own and so pardon one and all for what is done."
+
+His sudden start, the sudden quickening of his glance told her how
+shrewdly she had struck home.  Fearlessly, then, sure of herself,
+she continued.  "To that end they use you.  When you shall have
+served it you will but cumber them.  When they shall have used
+you to procure their security from me, then they will deal with
+you as they have ever sought to deal with you - so that you trouble
+them no more.  Ali, at last you understand!"
+
+He came to his feet, his brow gleaming with sweat, his slender
+hands nervously interlocked.
+
+"Oh, God!" he cried in a stifled voice.
+
+"Aye, you are in a trap, my lord.  Yourself you've sprung it."
+
+And now you behold him broken by the terror she had so cunningly
+evoked.  He flung himself upon his knees before her, and with
+upturned face and hands that caught and clawed at her own, he
+implored her pardon for the wrong that in his folly he had done
+her in taking sides with her enemies.
+
+She dissembled under a mask of gentleness the loathing that his
+cowardice aroused in her.
+
+"My enemies?" she echoed wistfully.  "Say rather your own enemies.
+It was their enmity to you that drove them into exile.  In your
+rashness you have recalled them, whilst at the same time you have
+so bound my hands that I cannot now help you if I would."
+
+"You can, Mary," he cried, "or else no one can.  Withhold the pardon
+they will presently be seeking of you.  Refuse to sign any remission
+of their deed."
+
+"And leave them to force you to sign it, and so destroy us both,"
+she answered.
+
+He ranted then, invoking the saints of heaven, and imploring her
+in their name - she who was so wise and strong - to discover some
+way out of this tangle in which his madness had enmeshed them.
+
+"What way is there short of flight?" she asked him.  "And how are
+we to fly who are imprisoned here you as well as myself?  Alas,
+Darnley, I fear our lives will end by paying the price of your
+folly."
+
+Thus she played upon his terrors, so that he would not be
+dismissed until she had promised that she would consider and seek
+some means of saving him, enjoining him meanwhile to keep strict
+watch upon himself and see that he betrayed nothing of his
+thoughts.
+
+She left him to the chastening of a sleepless night, then sent for
+him betimes on Monday morning, and bade him repair to the lords
+and tell them that realizing herself a prisoner in their hands she
+was disposed to make terms with them.  She would grant them pardon
+for what was done if on their side they undertook to be loyal
+henceforth and allowed her to resume her liberty.
+
+The message startled him.  But the smile with which she followed
+it was reassuring.
+
+"There is something else you are to do," she said, "if we are to
+turn the tables on these traitorous gentlemen.  Listen."  And she
+added matter that begat fresh hope in Darnley's despairing soul.
+
+He kissed her hands, lowly now and obedient as a hound that had
+been whipped to heel, and went below to bear her message to the
+lords.
+
+Morton and Ruthven heard him out, but betrayed no eagerness to
+seize the opportunity.
+
+"All this is but words that we hear," growled Ruthven , who lay
+stretched upon a couch, grimly suffering from the disease that
+was, slowly eating up his life.
+
+"She is guileful as the serpent," Morton added, "being bred up in
+the Court of France.  She will make you follow her will and desire,
+but she will not so lead us.  We hold her fast, and we do not let
+her go without some good security of what shall follow."
+
+"What security will satisfy you?" quoth Darnley.
+
+Murray and Lindsay came in as he was speaking, and Morton told them
+of the message that Darnley had brought.  Murray moved heavily
+across to a window-seat, and sat down.  He cleared a windowpane with
+his hand, and looked out upon the wintry landscape as if the matter
+had no interest for him.  But Lindsay echoed what the other twain
+had said already.
+
+"We want a deal more than promises that need not be kept," he said.
+
+Darnley looked from one to the other of them, seeing in their
+uncompromising attitude a confirmation of what the Queen had told
+him, and noting, too - as at another time he might not have noted
+ - their utter lack of deference to himself, their King.
+
+"Sirs," he said, "I vow you wrong Her Majesty.  I will stake my
+life upon her honour."
+
+"Why, so you may," sneered Ruthven, "but you'll not stake ours."
+
+"Take what security you please, and I will subscribe it."
+
+"Aye, but will the Queen?" wondered Morton.
+
+"She will.  I have her word for it."
+
+It took them the whole of that day to consider the terms of the
+articles that would satisfy them.  Towards evening the document
+was ready, and Morton and Ruthven representing all, accompanied by
+Murray, and introduced by Darnley, came to the chamber to which Her
+Majesty was confined by the guard they had set upon her.
+
+She sat as if in state awaiting them, very lovely and very tearful,
+knowing that woman's greatest strength is in her weakness, that
+tears would serve her best by presenting her as if broken to their
+will.
+
+In outward submission they knelt before her to make the pretence
+of suing for the pardon which they extorted by force of arms and
+duress.  When each in his turn had made the brief pleading oration
+he had prepared, she dried her eyes and controlled herself by
+obvious effort.
+
+"My lords," she said, in a voice that quivered and broke on every
+other word, "when have ye ever found me blood-thirsty, or greedy
+of your lands or goods that you must use me so, and take such means
+with me?  Ye have set my authority at naught, and wrought sedition
+in this realm.  Yet I forgive you all, that by this clemency I may
+move you to a better love and loyalty.  I desire that all that is
+passed may be buried in oblivion, so that you swear to me that in
+the future you will stand my friends and serve me faithfully, who
+am but a weak woman, and sorely need stout men to be my friends."
+
+For a moment her utterance was checked by sobs.  Then she controlled
+herself again by an effort so piteous to behold that even the
+flinty-hearted Ruthven was moved to some compassion.
+
+"Forgive this weakness in me, who am very weak, for very soon I am
+to be brought to bed as you well know, and I am in no case to offer
+resistance to any.  I have no more to say, my lords.  Since you
+promise on your side that you will put all disloyalty behind you,
+I pledge myself to remit and pardon all those that were banished
+for their share in the late rising, and likewise to pardon those
+that were concerned in the killing of Seigneur Davie.  All this
+shall be as if it had never been.  I pray you, my lords, make your
+own security in what sort you best please, and I will subscribe it."
+
+Morton proffered her the document they had prepared.  She conned
+it slowly, what time they watched her, pausing ever and anon to
+brush aside the tears that blurred her vision.  At last she nodded
+her lovely golden head.
+
+"It is very well," she said.  "All is here as I would have it be
+between us."  And she turned to Darnley.  "Give me pen and ink,
+my lord."
+
+Darnley dipped a quill and handed it to her.  She set the
+parchment on the little pulpit at her side.  Then, as she bent to
+sign, the pen fluttered from her fingers, and with a deep,
+shuddering sigh she sank back in her chair, her eyes closed, her
+face piteously white.
+
+"The Queen is faint!" cried Murray, springing forward.
+
+But she rallied instantly, smiling upon them wanly.
+
+"It is naught; it is past," she said.  But even as she spoke she
+put a hand to her brow.  "I am something dizzy.  My condition - "
+She faltered on a trembling note of appeal that increased their
+compassion, and aroused in them a shame of their own harshness.
+"Leave this security with me.  I will subscribe it in the morning
+ - indeed, as soon as I am sufficiently recovered."
+
+They rose from their knees at her bidding, and Morton in the name
+of all professed himself full satisfied, and deplored the affliction
+they had caused her, for which in the future they should make her
+their amends.
+
+"I thank you," she answered simply.  "You have leave to go."
+
+They departed well satisfied; and, counting the matter at an end,
+they quitted the palace and rode to their various lodgings in
+Edinburgh town, Murray going with Morton.
+
+Anon to Maitland of Lethington, who had remained behind, came one
+of the Queen's women to summon him to her presence.  He found her
+disposing herself for bed, and was received by her with tearful
+upbraidings.
+
+"Sir," she said, "one of the conditions upon which I consented to
+the will of their lordships was that an immediate term should be
+set to the insulting state of imprisonment in which I am kept here.
+Yet men-at-arms still guard the very door of my chamber, and my
+very attendants are hindered in their comings and goings.  Do you
+call this keeping faith with me?  Have I not granted all the
+requests of the lords?"
+
+Lethington, perceiving the justice of what she urged, withdrew
+shamed and confused at once to remedy the matter by removing the
+guards from the passage and the stairs and elsewhere, leaving none
+but those who paced outside the palace.
+
+It was a rashness he was bitterly to repent him on the morrow, when
+it was discovered that in the night Mary had not only escaped, but
+had taken Darnley with her.  Accompanied by him and a few attendants,
+she had executed the plan in which earlier that day she had secured
+her scared husband's cooperation.  At midnight they had made their
+way along the now unguarded corridors, and descended to the vaults
+of the palace, whence a secret passage communicated with the chapel.
+Through this and across the graveyard where lay the newly buried
+body of the Siegneur Davie - almost across the very grave itself
+which stood near the chapel door they had won to the horses waiting
+by Darnley's orders in the open.  And they had ridden so hard that
+by five o'clock of that Tuesday morning they were in Dunbar.
+
+In vain did the alarmed lords send a message after her to demand
+her signature of the security upon which she had duped them into
+counting prematurely.
+
+Within a week they were in full flight before the army at the head
+of which the prisoner who had slipped through their hands was
+returning to destroy them.  Too late did they perceive the arts by
+which she had fooled them, and seduced the shallow Darnley to
+betray them.
+
+
+
+
+II.    THE NIGHT OF KIRK O' FIELD
+           The Murder of Darnley
+
+
+Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of a lifetime in which mistakes
+were plentiful was the hesitancy of the Queen of Scots in executing
+upon her husband Darnley the prompt vengeance she had sworn for the
+murder of David Rizzio.
+
+When Rizzio was slain, and she herself held captive by the murderers
+in her Palace of Holyrood, whilst Darnley ruled as king, she had
+simulated belief in her husband's innocence that she might use him
+for her vengeful ends.
+
+She had played so craftily upon his cowardly nature as to convince
+him that Morton, Ruthven, and the other traitor lords with whom he
+had leagued himself were at heart his own implacable enemies; that
+they pretended friendship for him to make a tool of him, and that
+when he had served their turn they would destroy him.
+
+In his consequent terror he had betrayed his associates, assisting
+her to trick them by a promise to sign an act of oblivion for what
+was done.  Trusting to this the lords had relaxed their vigilance,
+whereupon, accompanied by Darnley, she had escaped by night from
+Holyrood.
+
+Hope tempering at first the rage and chagrin in the hearts of the
+lords she had duped, they had sent a messenger to her at Dunbar to
+request of her the fulfilment of her promise to sign the document
+of their security.
+
+But Mary put off the messenger, and whilst the army she had summoned
+was hastily assembling, she used her craft to divide the rebels
+against themselves.
+
+To her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, to Argyll, and to all
+those who had been exiled for their rebellion at the time of her
+marriage - and who knew not where they stood in the present turn of
+events, since one of the objects of the murder had been to procure
+their reinstatement - she sent an offer of complete pardon, on
+condition that they should at once dissociate themselves from those
+concerned in the death of the Seigneur Davie.
+
+These terms they accepted thankfully, as well they might.  Thereupon,
+finding themselves abandoned by all men - even by Darnley in whose
+service they had engaged in the murder - Morton, Ruthven, and their
+associates scattered and fled.
+
+By the end of that month of March, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay of the
+Byres, George Douglas, and some sixty others were denounced as
+rebels with forfeiture of life and goods, while one Thomas Scott,
+who had been in command of the guards that had kept Her Majesty
+prisoner at Holyrood, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at the
+Market Cross.
+
+News of this reached the fugitives to increase their desperate rage.
+But what drove the iron into the soul of the arch-murderer Ruthven
+was Darnley's solemn public declaration denying all knowledge of or
+complicity in Rizzio's assassination; nor did it soothe his fury to
+know that all Scotland rang with contemptuous laughter at that
+impudent and cowardly perjury.  From his sick-bed at Newcastle,
+whereon some six weeks later he was to breathe his last, the
+forsaken wretch replied to it by sending the Queen the bond to
+which he had demanded Darnley's signature before embarking upon
+the business.
+
+It was a damning document.  There above the plain signature and seal
+of the King was the admission, not merely of complicity, but that
+the thing was done by his express will and command, that the
+responsibility was his own, and that he would hold the doers
+scatheless from all consequences.
+
+Mary could scarcely have hoped to be able to confront her worthless
+husband with so complete a proof of his duplicity and baseness.
+She sent for him, confounded him with the sight of that appalling
+bond, made an end to the amity which for her own ends she had
+pretended, and drove him out of her presence with a fury before
+which he dared not linger.
+
+You see him, then, crushed under his load of mortification,
+realizing at last how he had been duped on every hand, first by the
+lords for their own purpose, and then by the Queen for hers.  Her
+contempt of him was now so manifest that it spread to all who served
+him - for she made it plain that who showed him friendship earned
+her deep displeasure - so that he was forced to withdraw from a
+Court where his life was become impossible.  For a while he wandered
+up and down a land where every door was shut in his face, where
+every man of whatsoever party, traitor or true, despised him alike.
+In the end, he took himself off to his father, Lennox, and at
+Glasgow he sought what amusement he could with his dogs and his
+hawks, and such odd vulgar rustic love-affairs as came his way.
+
+It was in allowing him thus to go his ways, in leaving her vengeance
+ - indeed, her justice - but half accomplished, that lay the
+greatest of the Queen's mistakes.  Better for her had she taken
+with Darnley the direct way that was her right.  Better for her,
+if acting strongly then, she had banished or hanged him for his
+part in the treason that had inspired the murder of Rizzio.
+Unfortunately, a factor that served to quicken her abhorrence of
+him served also to set a curb of caution upon the satisfaction
+of it.
+
+This factor that came so inopportunely into her life was her regard
+for the arrogant, unscrupulous Earl of Bothwell.  Her hand was
+stayed by fear that men should say that for Bothwell's sake she had
+rid herself of a husband become troublesome.  That Bothwell had
+been her friend in the hour when she had needed friends, and knew
+not whom she might trust; that by his masterfulness he seemed a
+man upon whom a woman might lean with confidence, may account for
+the beginnings of the extraordinary influence he came so swiftly
+to exercise over her, and the passion he awakened in her to such a
+degree that she was unable to dissemble it.
+
+Her regard for him, the more flagrant by contrast with her contempt
+for Darnley, is betrayed in the will she made before her confinement
+in the following June.  Whilst to Darnley she bequeathed nothing but
+the red-enamelled diamond ring with which he had married her - "It
+was with this that I was married," she wrote almost contemptuously.
+"I leave it to the King who gave it me" - she appointed Bothwell to
+the tutelage of her child in the event of her not surviving it, and
+to the government of the realm.
+
+The King came to visit her during her convalescence, and was scowled
+upon by Murray and Argyll, who were at Holyrood, and most of all by
+Bothwell, whose arrogance by now was such that he was become the
+best-hated man in Scotland.  The Queen received him very coldly,
+whilst using Bothwell more than cordially in his very presence, so
+that he departed again in a deeper humiliation than before.
+
+Then before the end of July there was her sudden visit to Bothwell
+at Alloa, which gave rise to so much scandal.  Hearing of it,
+Darnley followed in a vain attempt to assert his rights as king and
+husband, only to be flouted and dismissed with the conviction that
+his life was no longer safe in Scotland, and that he had best cross
+the Border.  Yet, to his undoing, detained perhaps by the overweening
+pride that is usually part of a fool's equipment, he did not act
+upon that wise resolve.  He returned instead to his hawking and his
+hunting, and was seldom seen at Court thereafter.
+
+Even when in the following October, Mary lay at the point of death
+at Jedburgh, Darnley came but to stay a day, and left her again
+without any assurance that she would recover.  But then the facts
+of her illness, and how it had been contracted, were not such as to
+encourage kindness in him, even had he been inclined to kindness.
+
+Bothwell had taken three wounds in a Border affray some weeks
+before, and Mary, hearing of this and that he lay in grievous case
+at Hermitage, had ridden thither in her fond solicitude - a distance
+of thirty miles - and back again in the same day, thus contracting
+a chill which had brought her to the very gates of death.
+
+Darnley had not only heard of this, but he had found Bothwell at
+Jedburgh, whither he had been borne in a litter, when in his turn
+he had heard of how it was with Mary; and Bothwell had treated him
+with more than the contempt which all men now showed him, but which
+from none could wound him so deeply as from this man whom rumour
+accounted Mary's lover.
+
+Matters between husband and wife were thus come to a pass in which
+they could not continue, as all men saw, and as she herself
+confessed at Craigrnillar, whither she repaired, still weak in body,
+towards the end of November.
+
+Over a great fire that blazed in a vast chamber of the castle she
+sat sick at heart and shivering, for all that her wasted body was
+swathed in a long cloak of deepest purple reversed with ermine.  Her
+face was thin and of a transparent pallor, her eyes great pools of
+wistfulness amid the shadows which her illness had set about them.
+
+"I do wish I could be dead!" she sighed.
+
+Bothwell's eyes narrowed.  He was leaning on the back of her tall
+chair, a long, virile figure with a hawk-nosed, bearded face that
+was sternly handsome.  He thrust back the crisp dark hair that
+clustered about his brow, and fetched a sigh.
+
+"It was never my own death I wished when a man stood in my road to
+aught I craved," he said, lowering his voice, for Maitland of
+Lethington - now restored to his secretaryship - was writing at a
+table across the room, and my Lord of Argyll was leaning over him.
+
+She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes startled.
+
+"What devil's counsel do you whisper?" she asked him.  And when he
+would have answered, she raised a hand.  "No," she said.  "Not that
+way."
+
+"There is another," said Bothwell coolly.  He moved, came round,
+and stood squarely upon the hearth, his back to the fire,
+confronting her, nor did he further trouble to lower his voice.
+"We have considered it already."
+
+"What have you considered?"
+
+Her voice was strained; fear and excitement blended in her face.
+
+"How the shackles that fetter you might be broken.  Be not alarmed.
+It was the virtuous Murray himself propounded it to Argyll and
+Lethington - for the good of Scotland and yourself."  A sneer
+flitted across his tanned face.  "Let them speak for themselves."
+He raised his voice and called to them across the room.
+
+They came at once, and the four made an odd group as they stood
+there in the firelit gloom of that November day - the lovely young
+Queen, so frail and wistful in her high-backed chair; the stalwart,
+arrogant Bothwell, magnificent in a doublet of peach-coloured velvet
+that tapered to a golden girdle; Argyll, portly and sober in a rich
+suit of black; and Maitland of Lethington, lean and crafty of face,
+in a long furred gown that flapped about his bony shanks.
+
+It was to Lethington that Bothwell addressed himself.
+
+"Her Grace is in a mood to hear how the Gordian knot of her marriage
+might be unravelled," said he, grimly ironic.
+
+Lethington raised his eyebrows, licked his thin lips, and rubbed his
+bony hands one in the other.
+
+"Unravelled?" he echoed with wondering stress.  "Unravelled?  Ha!"
+His dark eyes flashed round at them.  "Better adopt Alexander's plan,
+and cut it.  'Twill be more complete, and - and final."
+
+"No, no!" she cried.  "I will not have you shed his blood."
+
+"He himself was none so tender where another was concerned,"
+Bothwell reminded her - as if the memory of Rizzio were dear to him.
+
+"What he may have done does not weigh upon my conscience," was her
+answer.
+
+"He might," put in Argyll, "be convicted of treason for having
+consented to Your Grace's retention in ward at Holyrood after
+Rizzio's murder."
+
+She considered an instant, then shook her head.
+
+"It is too late.  It should have been done long since.  Now men
+will say that it is but a pretext to be rid of him."  She looked up
+at Bothwell, who remained standing immediately before her, between
+her and the fire.  "You said that my Lord of Murray had discussed
+this matter.  Was it in such terms as these?"
+
+Bothwell laughed silently at the thought of the sly Murray rendering
+himself a party to anything so direct and desperate.  It was
+Lethington who answered her.
+
+"My Lord Murray was for a divorce.  That would set Your Grace free,
+and it might be obtained, he said, by tearing up the Pope's bull of
+dispensation that permitted the marriage.  Yet, madame, although
+Lord Murray would himself go no further, I have no cause to doubt
+that were other means concerted, he would be content to look through
+his fingers."
+
+Her mind, however, did not seem to follow his speech beyond the
+matter of the divorce.  A faint flush of eagerness stirred in her
+pale cheeks.
+
+"Ah, yes!" she cried.  "I, too, have thought of that - of this
+divorce.  And God knows I do not want for grounds.  And it could be
+obtained, you say, by tearing up this papal bull?"
+
+"The marriage could be proclaimed void thereafter," Argyll explained.
+
+She looked past Bothwell into the fire, and took her chin in her
+hand.
+
+"Yes," she said slowly, musingly, and again, "yes.  That were a
+way.  That is the way."  And then suddenly she looked up, and they
+saw doubt and dread in her eyes.  "But in that case - what of my
+son?"
+
+"Aye!" said Lethington grimly.  He shrugged his narrow shoulders,
+parted his hands, and brought them together again.  "That's the
+obstacle, as we perceived.  It would imperil his succession."
+
+"It would make a bastard of him, you mean?" she cried, demanding
+the full expansion of their thoughts.
+
+"Indeed it would do no less," the secretary assented.
+
+"So that," said Bothwell, softly, "we come back to Alexander's
+method.  What the fingers may not unravel, the knife can sever."
+
+She shivered, and drew her furred cloak the more closely about her.
+
+Lethington leaned forward.  He spoke in kindly, soothing accents.
+
+"Let us guide this matter among us, madame," he murmured, "and we'll
+find means to rid Your Grace of this young fool, without hurt to
+your honour or prejudice to your son.  And the Earl of Murray will
+look the other way, provided you pardon Morton and his friends for
+the killing they did in Darnley's service."
+
+She looked from one to the other of them, scanning each face in
+turn.  Then her eyes returned to a contemplation of the flaming
+logs, and she spoke very softly.
+
+"Do nothing by which a spot might be laid on my honour or
+conscience," she said, with an odd deliberateness that seemed to
+insist upon the strictly literal meaning of her words.  "Rather I
+pray you let the matter rest until God remedy it."
+
+Lethington looked at the other two, the other two looked at him.
+He rubbed his hands softly.
+
+"Trust to us, madame," he answered.  "We will so guide the matter
+that Your Grace shall see nothing but what is good and approved
+by Parliament."
+
+She committed herself to no reply, and so they were content to
+take their answer from her silence.  They went in quest of Huntly
+and Sir James Balfour, and the five of them entered into a bond
+for the destruction of him whom they named "the young fool and
+proud tiranne," to be engaged in when Mary should have pardoned
+Morton and his fellow-conspirators.
+
+It was not until Christmas Eve that she signed this pardon of some
+seventy fugitives, proscribed for their participation in the Rizzio
+murder, towards whom she had hitherto shown herself so implacable.
+
+The world saw in this no more than a deed of clemency and charity
+befitting the solemn festival of good-will.  But the five who had
+entered into that bond at Craigmillar Castle beheld in it more
+accurately the fulfilment of her part of the suggested bargain,
+the price she paid in advance to be rid of Darnley, the sign of
+her full agreement that the knot which might not be unravelled
+should be cut.
+
+On that same day Her Grace went with Bothwell to Lord Drummond's,
+where they abode for the best part of a week, and thence they
+went on together to Tullibardine, the rash and open intimacy
+between them giving nourishment to scandal.
+
+At the same time Darnley quitted Stirling, where he had lately been
+living in miserable conditions, ignored by the nobles, and even
+stinted in his necessary expenses, deprived of his ordinary servants,
+and his silver replaced by pewter.  The miserable youth reached
+Glasgow deadly sick.  He had been taken ill on the way, and the
+inevitable rumour was spread that he had been poisoned.  Later, when
+it became known that his once lovely countenance was now blotched
+and disfigured, it was realized that his illness was no more than
+the inevitable result of the debauched life he led.
+
+Conceiving himself on the point of death, Darnley wrote piteously
+to the Queen; but she ignored his letters until she learnt that his
+condition was improving, when at last (on January 29th) she went to
+visit him at Glasgow.  It may well be that she nourished some hope
+that nature would resolve the matter for her, and remove the need
+for such desperate measures as had been concerted.  But seeing him
+likely to recover, two things became necessary, to bring him to the
+place that was suitable for the fulfilment of her designs, and to
+simulate reconciliation with him, and even renewed and tender
+affection, so that none might hereafter charge her with complicity
+in what should follow.
+
+I hope that in this I do her memory no injustice.  It is thus that
+I read the sequel, nor can I read it in any other way.
+
+She found him abed, with a piece of taffeta over his face to hide
+its disfigurement, and she was so moved - as it seemed - by his
+condition, that she fell on her knees beside him, and wept in the
+presence of her attendants and his own; confessing penitence if
+anything she had done in the past could have contributed to their
+estrangement.  Thus reconciliation followed, and she used him
+tenderly, grew solicitous concerning him, and vowed that as soon
+as he could be moved, he must be taken to surroundings more
+salubrious and more befitting the dignity of his station.
+
+Gladly then he agreed to return with her to Holyrood.
+
+"Not to Holyrood," she said.  "At least, not until your health is
+mended, lest you should carry thither infection dangerous to your
+little son."
+
+"Whither then?" he asked her, and when she mentioned Craigmillar,
+he started up in bed, so that the taffeta slipped from his face,
+and it was with difficulty that she dissembled the loathing with
+which the sight of its pustules inspired her.
+
+"Craigmillar!" he cried.  "Then what I was told is true."
+
+"What were you told?" quoth she, staring at him, brows knit, her
+face blank.
+
+A rumour had filtered through to him of the Craigmillar bond.  He
+had been told that a letter drawn up there had been presented to
+her for her signature, which she had refused.  Thus much he told
+her, adding that he could not believe that she would do him any
+hurt; and yet why did she desire to bear him to Craigmillar?
+
+"You have been told lies," she answered him.  "I saw no such letter;
+I subscribed none, nor was ever asked to subscribe any," which
+indeed was literally true.  "To this I swear.  As for your going to
+Craigmillar, you shall go whithersoever you please, yourself."
+
+He sank back on his pillows, and his trembling subsided.
+
+"I believe thee, Mary.  I believe thou'ld never do me any harm," he
+repeated, "and if any other would," he added on a bombastic note,
+"they shall buy it dear, unless they take me sleeping.  But I'll
+never to Craigmillar."
+
+"I have said you shall go where you please," she assured him again.
+
+He considered.
+
+"There is the house at Kirk o' Field.  It has a fine garden, and is
+in a position that is deemed the healthiest about Edinburgh.  I need
+good air; good air and baths have been prescribed me to cleanse me
+of this plague.  Kirk o' Field will serve, if it be your pleasure."
+
+She gave a ready consent, dispatched messengers ahead to prepare
+the house, and to take from Holyrood certain furnishings that should
+improve the interior, and render it as fitting as possible a
+dwelling for a king.
+
+Some days later they set out, his misgivings quieted by the
+tenderness which she now showed him - particularly when witnesses
+were at hand.
+
+It was a tenderness that grew steadily during those twelve days in
+which he lay in convalescence in the house at Kirk o' Field; she
+was playful and coquettish with him as a maid with her lover, so
+that nothing was talked of but the completeness of this
+reconciliation, and the hope that it would lead to a peace within
+the realm that would be a benefit to all.  Yet many there were who
+marvelled at it, wondering whether the waywardness and caprice of
+woman could account for so sudden a change from hatred to affection.
+
+Darnley was lodged on the upper floor, in a room comfortably
+furnished from the palace.  It was hung with six pieces of tapestry,
+and the floor was partly covered by an Eastern carpet.  It contained,
+besides the handsome bed - which once had belonged to the Queen's
+mother - a couple of high chairs in purple velvet, a little table
+with a green velvet cover, and some cushions in red.  By the side
+of the bed stood the specially prepared bath that was part of the
+cure which Darnley was undergoing.  It had for its incongruous lid
+a door that had been lifted from its hinges.
+
+Immediately underneath was a room that had been prepared for the
+Queen, with a little bed of yellow and green damask, and a furred
+coverlet.  The windows looked out upon the close, and the door
+opened upon the passage leading to the garden.
+
+Here the Queen slept on several of those nights of early February,
+for indeed she was more often at Kirk o' Field than at Holy-rood,
+and when she was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and
+beguiling the tedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in
+the garden with Lady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her
+sometimes singing as she sauntered there.
+
+Never since the ephemeral season of their courtship had she been
+on such fond terms with him, and all his fears of hostile designs
+entertained against him by her immediate followers were stilled at
+last.  Yet not for long.  Into his fool's paradise came Lord Robert
+of Holyrood, with a warning that flung him into a sweat of panic.
+
+The conspirators had hired a few trusted assistants to help them
+carry out their plans, and a rumour had got abroad - in the
+unaccountable way of rumours - that there was danger to the King.
+It was of this rumour that Lord Robert brought him word, telling
+him bluntly that unless he escaped quickly from this place, he would
+leave his life there.  Yet when Darnley had repeated this to the
+Queen, and the Queen indignantly had sent for Lord Robert and
+demanded to know his meaning, his lordship denied that he had
+uttered any such warning, protested that his words must have been
+misunderstood - that they referred solely to the King's condition,
+which demanded, he thought, different treatment and healthier air.
+
+Knowing not what to believe, Darnley's uneasiness abode with him.
+Yet, trusting Mary, and feeling secure so long as she was by his
+side, he became more and more insistent upon her presence, more
+and more fretful in her absence.  It was to quiet him that she
+consented to sleep as often as might be at Kirk o' Field.  She
+slept there on the Wednesday of that week, and again on Friday,
+and she was to have done so yet again on that fateful Sunday,
+February 9th, but that her servant Sebastien - one who had
+accompanied her from France, and for whom she had a deep affection
+ - was that day married, and Her Majesty had promised to be present
+at the masque that night at Holyrood, in honour of his nuptials.
+
+Nevertheless, she did not utterly neglect her husband on that
+account.  She rode to Kirk o' Field early in the evening,
+accompanied by Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, and some others; and
+leaving the lords at cards below to while away the time, she
+repaired to Darnley, and sat beside his bed, soothing a spirit
+oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of what was brewing.
+
+"Ye'll not leave me the night," he begged her once.
+
+"Alas," she said, "I must!  Sebastien is being wed, and I have
+promised to be present."
+
+He sighed and shifted uneasily.
+
+"Soon I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to
+haunt me.  But just now I cannot bear you from my sight.  When you
+are with me I am at peace.  I know that all is well.  But when you
+go I am filled with fears, lying helpless here."
+
+"What should you fear?" she asked him.
+
+"The hate that I know is alive against me."
+
+"You are casting shadows to affright yourself," said she.
+
+"What's that?" he cried, half raising himself in sudden alarm.
+"Listen!"
+
+>From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accompanied
+by a noise as of something being trundled.
+
+"It will be my servants in my room - putting it to rights."
+
+"To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?" he asked.
+He raised his voice and called his page.
+
+"Why, what will you do?" she asked him, steadying her own alarm.
+
+He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what
+was doing in the room below.  The lad departed, and had he done his
+errand faithfully, he would have found Bothwell's followers, Hay
+and Hepburn, and the Queen's man, Nicholas Hubert better known as
+French Paris - emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately
+under the King's bed.  But it happened that in the passage he came
+suddenly face to face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked
+and hatted, and Bothwell asked him whither he went.
+
+The boy told him.
+
+"It is nothing," Bothwell said.  "They are moving Her Grace's bed
+in accordance with her wishes."
+
+And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectively
+blocked his path, chose the line of lesser resistance.  He went back
+to bear the King that message as if for himself he had seen what my
+Lord Bothwell had but told him.
+
+Darnley was pacified by the assurance, and the lad withdrew.
+
+"Did I not tell you how it was?" quoth Mary.  "Is not my word enough?"
+
+"Forgive the doubt," Darnley begged her.  "Indeed, there was no
+doubt of you, who have shown me so much charity in my affliction."
+He sighed, and looked at her with melancholy eyes.
+
+"I would the past had been other than it has been between you and
+me," he said.  "I was too young for kingship, I think.  In my green
+youth I listened to false counsellors, and was quick to jealousy
+and the follies it begets.  Then, when you cast me out and I
+wandered friendless, a devil took possession of me.  Yet, if you
+will but consent to bury all the past into oblivion, I will make
+amends, and you shall find me worthier hereafter."
+
+She rose, white to the lips, her bosom heaving under her long cloak.
+She turned aside and stepped to the window.  She stood there, peering
+out into the gloom of the close, her knees trembling under her.
+
+"Why do you not answer me?" he cried.
+
+"What answer do you need?" she said, and her voice shook.  "Are you
+not answered already?" And then, breathlessly, she added: "It is
+time to go, I think."
+
+They heard a heavy step upon the stairs and the clank of a sword
+against the rails.  The door opened, and Bothwell, wrapped in his
+scarlet cloak, stood bending his tall shoulders under the low lintel.
+His gleaming eyes, so oddly mocking in their glance, for all that
+his face was set, fell upon Darnley, and with their look flung him
+into an inward state of blending fear and rage.
+
+"Your Grace," said Bothwell's deep voice, "it is close upon midnight."
+
+He came no more than in time; it needed the sight of him with its
+reminder of all that he meant to her to sustain a purpose that was
+being sapped by pity.
+
+"Very well," she said.  "I come."
+
+Bothwell stood aside to give her egress and to invite it.  But the
+King delayed her.
+
+"A moment - a word!" he begged, and to Bothwell: "Give us leave
+apart, sir!"
+
+Yet, King though he might be, there was no ready obedience from the
+arrogant Border lord, her lover.  It was to Mary that Bothwell
+looked for commands, nor stirred until she signed to him to go.  And
+even then he went no farther than the other side of the door, so
+that he might be close at hand to fortify her should any weakness
+assail her now in this supreme hour.
+
+Darnley struggled up in bed, caught her hand, and pulled her to him.
+
+"Do not leave me, Mary.  Do not leave me!" he implored her.
+
+"Why, what is this?" she cried, but her voice lacked steadiness.
+"Would you have me disappoint poor Sebastien, who loves me?"
+
+"I see.  Sebastien is more to you than I?"
+
+"Now this is folly.  Sebastien is my faithful servant."
+
+"And am I less?  Do you not believe that my one aim henceforth will
+be to serve you and faithfully?  Oh, forgive this weakness.  I am
+full of evil foreboding to-night.  Go, then, if go you must, but
+give me at least some assurance of your love, some pledge of it in
+earnest that you will come again to-morrow nor part from me again."
+
+She looked into the white, piteous young face that had once been so
+lovely, and her soul faltered.  It needed the knowledge that
+Bothwell waited just beyond the door, that he could overhear what
+was being said, to strengthen her fearfully in her tragic purpose.
+
+She has been censured most for what next she did.  Murray himself
+spoke of it afterwards as the worst part of the business.  But it
+is possible that she was concerned only at the moment to put an end
+to a scene that was unnerving her, and that she took the readiest
+means to it.
+
+She drew a ring from her finger and slipped it on to one of his.
+
+"Be this the pledge, then," she said; "and so content and rest
+yourself."
+
+With that she broke from him, white and scared, and reached the door.
+Yet with her hand upon the latch she paused.  Looking at him she saw
+that he was smiling, and perhaps horror of her betrayal of him
+overwhelmed her.  It must be that she then desired to warn him, yet
+with Bothwell within earshot she realized that any warning must
+precipitate the tragedy, with direst consequences to Bothwell and
+herself.
+
+To conquer her weakness, she thought of David Rizzio, whom Darnley
+had murdered almost at her feet, and whom this night was to avenge.
+She thought of the Judas part that he had played in that affair,
+and sought persuasion that it was fitting he should now be paid in
+kind.  Yet, very woman that she was, failing to find any such
+persuasion, she found instead in the very thought of Rizzio the
+very means to convey her warning.
+
+Standing tense and white by the door, regarding him with dilating
+eyes, she spoke her last words to him.
+
+"It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain,"
+she said, and on that passed out to the waiting Bothwell.
+
+Once on the stairs she paused and set a hand upon the shoulder of
+the stalwart Borderer.
+
+"Must it be?  Oh, must it be?" she whispered fearfully.
+
+She caught the flash of his eyes in the half gloom as he leaned
+over her, his arm about her waist drawing her to him.
+
+"Is it not just?  Is it not full merited?" he asked her.
+
+"And yet I would that we did not profit by it," she complained.
+
+"Shall we pity him on that account?" he asked, and laughed softly
+and shortly.  "Come away," he added abruptly.  "They wait for you!"
+And so, by the suasion of his arm and his imperious will, she was
+swept onward along the road of her destiny.
+
+Outside the horses were ready.  There was a little group of
+gentlemen to escort her, and half a dozen servants with lighted
+torches, whilst Lady Reres was in waiting.  A man stood forward to
+assist her to mount, his face and hands so blackened by gunpowder
+that for a moment she failed to recognize him.  She laughed
+nervously when he named himself.
+
+"Lord, Paris, how begrimed you are!" she cried; and, mounting,
+rode away towards Holyrood with her torchbearers and attendants.
+
+In the room above, Darnley lay considering her last words.  He
+turned them over in his thoughts, assured by the tone she had
+used and how she had looked that they contained some message.
+
+"It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain."
+
+In themselves, those words were not strictly accurate.  It wanted
+yet a month to the anniversary of Rizzio's death.  And why, at
+parting, should she have reminded him of that which she had agreed
+should be forgotten?  Instantly came the answer that she sought to
+warn him that retribution was impending.  He thought again of the
+rumours that he had heard of a bond signed at Craigmillar; he
+recalled Lord Robert's warning to him, afterwards denied.
+
+He recalled her words to himself at the time of Rizzio's death:
+"Consider well what I now say.  Consider and remember.  I shall
+never rest until I give you as sore a heart as I have presently."
+And further, he remembered her cry at once agonized and fiercely
+vengeful: "Jamais, jamais je n'oublierai."
+
+His terrors mounted swiftly, to be quieted again at last when he
+looked at the ring she had put upon his finger in pledge of her
+renewed affection.  The past was dead and buried, surely.  Though
+danger might threaten, she would guard him against it, setting her
+love about him like a panoply of steel.  When she came to-morrow,
+he would question her closely, and she should be more frank and
+open with him, and tell him all.  Meanwhile, he would take his
+precautions for to-night.
+
+He sent his page to make fast all doors.  The youth went and did
+as he was bidden, with the exception of the door that led to the
+garden.  It had no bolts, and the key was missing; yet, seeing
+his master's nervous, excited state, he forbore from any mention
+of that circumstance when presently he returned to him.
+
+Darnley requested a book of Psalms, that he might read himself to
+sleep.  The page dozed in a chair, and so the hours passed; and at
+last the King himself fell into a light slumber.  Out of this he
+started suddenly at a little before two o'clock, and sat upright
+in bed, alarmed without knowing why, listening with straining ears
+and throbbing pulses.
+
+He caught a repetition of the sound that had aroused him, a sound
+akin to that which had drawn his attention earlier, when Mary had
+been with him.  It came up faintly from the room immediately beneath:
+her room.  Some one was moving there, he thought.  Then, as he
+continued to listen, all became quiet again, save his fears, which
+would not be quieted.  He extinguished the light, slipped from the
+bed, and, crossing to the window, peered out into the close that
+was faintly illumined by a moon in its first quarter.  A shadow
+moved, he thought.  He watched with increasing panic for
+confirmation, and presently saw that he had been right.  Not one,
+but several shadows were shifting there among the trees.  Shadows
+of men, they were, and as he peered, he saw one that went running
+from the house across the lawn and joined the others, now clustered
+together in a group.  What could be their purpose here?  In the
+silence, he seemed to hear again the echo of Mary's last words to
+him:
+
+"It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain."
+
+In terror, he groped his way to the chair where the page slept and
+shook the lad vigorously.
+
+"Afoot, boy!" he said, in a hoarse whisper.  He had meant to shout
+it, but his voice failed him, his windpipe clutched by panic.
+"Afoot - we are beset by enemies!"
+
+At once the youth was wide awake, and together the King just in his
+shirt as he was - they made their way from the room in the dark,
+groping their way, and so reached the windows at the back.  Darnley
+opened one of these very softly, then sent the boy back for a sheet.
+Making this fast, they descended by it to the garden, and started
+towards the wall, intending to climb it, that they might reach the
+open.
+
+The boy led the way, and the King followed, his teeth chattering
+as much from the cold as from the terror that possessed him.  And
+then, quite suddenly, without the least warning, the ground, it
+seemed to them, heaved under their feet, and they were flung
+violently forward on their faces.  A great blaze rent the darkness
+of the night, accompanied by the thunders of an explosion so
+terrific that it seemed as if the whole world must have been
+shattered by it.
+
+For some instants the King and his page lay half stunned where they
+had fallen, and well might it have been for them had they so
+continued.  But Darnley, recovering, staggered to his feet, pulling
+the boy up with him and supporting him.  Then, as he began to move,
+he heard a soft whistle in the gloom behind him.  Over his shoulder
+he looked towards the house, to behold a great, smoking gap now
+yawning in it.  Through this gap he caught a glimpse of shadowy men
+moving in the close beyond, and he realized that he had been seen.
+The white shirt he wore had betrayed his presence to them.
+
+With a stifled scream, he began to run towards the wall, the page
+staggering after him.  Behind them now came the clank and thud of
+a score of overtaking feet.  Soon they were surrounded.  The King
+turned this way and that, desperately seeking a way out of the
+murderous human ring that fenced them round.
+
+"What d'ye seek?  What d'ye seek?" he screeched, in a pitiful
+attempt to question with authority.
+
+A tall man in a trailing cloak advanced and seized him.
+
+"We seek thee, fool!" said the voice of Bothwell.
+
+The kingliness that he had never known how to wear becomingly now
+fell from him utterly.
+
+"Mercy - mercy!" he cried.
+
+"Such mercy as you had on David Rizzio!" answered the Border lord.
+
+Darnley fell on his knees and sought to embrace the murderer's legs.
+Bothwell stooped over him, seized the wretched man's shirt, and
+pulled it from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about
+the royal neck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight,
+nor relaxed his hold until the young man's struggles had entirely
+ceased.
+
+Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in the
+chapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there,
+as a contemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, "not only
+without grief, but with greedy eyes."  Thereafter it was buried
+secretly in the night by Rizzio's side, so that murderer and victim
+lay at peace together in the end.
+
+
+
+
+III.   THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL
+            Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain
+
+
+You a Spaniard of Spain?" had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous.
+"I do not believe it."
+
+And upon that she had put spur to the great black horse that bore her
+and had ridden off along the precipitous road by the river.
+
+After her he had flung his answer on a note of laughter, bitter and
+cynical as the laughter of the damned, laughter that expressed all
+things but mirth.
+
+"Oh, a Spaniard of Spain, indeed, Madame la Marquise.  Very much a
+Spaniard of Spain, I assure you."
+
+The great black horse and the woman in red flashed round a bend of
+the rocky road and were eclipsed by a clump of larches.  The man
+leaned heavily upon his ebony cane, sighed wearily, and grew
+thoughtful.  Then, with a laugh and a shrug, he sat down in the
+shade of the firs that bordered the road.  Behind him, crowning the
+heights, loomed the brown castle built by Gaston Phoebus, Count of
+Foix, two hundred years ago, and the Tower of Montauzet, its walls
+scarred by the shots of the rebellious Biscayans.  Below him,
+nourished by the snows that were dissolving under the sunshine of
+early spring, sped the tumbling river; beyond this spread pasture
+and arable land to the distant hills, and beyond those stood the
+gigantic sharp-summited wall of the Pyrenees, its long ridge
+dominated by the cloven cone of the snow clad Pic du Midi.  There
+was in the sight of that great barrier, at once natural and
+political, a sense of security for this fugitive from the perils
+and the hatreds that lurked in Spain beyond.  Here in Bearn he was
+a king's guest, enjoying the hospitality of the great Castle of Pau,
+safe from the vindictive persecution of the mean tyrant who ruled
+in Spain.  And here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been
+but for the thought of this woman - this Marquise de Chantenac - who
+had gone to such lengths in her endeavours to soften his exile that
+her ultimate object could never have been in doubt to a coxcomb,
+though it was in some doubt to Antonio Perez, who had been cured
+for all time of Coxcombry by suffering and misfortune, to say
+nothing of increasing age.  It was when he bethought him of that
+age of his that he was chiefly intrigued by the amazing ardour of
+this great lady of Bearn.  A dozen years ago - before misfortune
+overtook him - he would have accepted her flagrant wooing as a
+proper tribute.  For then he had been the handsome, wealthy, witty,
+profligate Secretary of State to His Catholic Majesty King Philip II,
+with a power in Spain second only to the King's, and sometimes even
+greater.  In those days he would have welcomed her as her endowments
+merited.  She was radiantly lovely, in the very noontide of her
+resplendent youth, the well-born widow of a gentleman of Bearn.  And
+it would not have lain within the strength or inclinations of Antonio
+Perez, as he once had been, to have resisted the temptation that she
+offered.  Ever avid of pleasure, he had denied himself no single cup
+of it that favouring Fortune had proffered him.  It was, indeed,
+because of this that he was fallen from his high estate; it was a
+woman who had pulled him down in ruin, tumbling with him to her doom.
+She, poor soul, was dead at last, which was the best that any lover
+could have wished her.  But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with
+gall in his veins instead of blood.  He was the pale, faded shadow
+of that arrogant, reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune.
+He was fifty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture,
+sickly from long years of incarceration.
+
+What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal
+snows of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him
+to awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac?  Was it that
+his tribulations stirred her pity, or that the fame of him which
+rang through Europe shed upon his withering frame some of the
+transfiguring radiance of romance?
+
+It marked, indeed, the change in him that he should pause to
+question, whose erstwhile habit had been blindly to accept the good
+things tossed by Fortune into his lap.  But question he did,
+pondering that parting taunt of hers to which, for emphasis, she
+had given an odd redundancy - "You a Spaniard of Spain!"  Could her
+meaning have been plainer?  Was not a Spaniard proverbially as quick
+to love as to jealousy?  Was not Spain, that scented land of warmth
+and colour, of cruelty and blood, of throbbing lutes under lattices
+ajar, of mitred sinners doing public penance, that land where lust
+and piety went hand in hand, where passion and penitence lay down
+together - was not Spain the land of love's most fruitful growth?
+And was not a Spaniard the very hierophant of love?
+
+His thoughts swung with sudden yearning to his wife Juana and their
+children, held in brutal captivity by Philip, who sought to slake
+upon them some of the vindictiveness from which their husband and
+father had at last escaped.  Not that Antonio Perez observed marital
+fidelity more closely than any other Spaniard of his time, or of any
+time.  But Antonio Perez was growing old, older than he thought,
+older than his years.  He knew it.  Madame de Chantenac had proved
+it to him.
+
+She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac,
+neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him
+here at Pau.
+
+"You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul," he
+had excused himself.  "Believe one who knows the world, to his
+bitter cost.  Tongues will wag."
+
+"And your Spanish pride will not suffer that clods may talk of you?"
+
+"I am thinking of you, madame."
+
+"Of me?" she had answered.  "Why, of me they talk already - talk
+their fill.  I must pretend blindness to the leering eyes that watch
+me each time I come to Pau; feign unconsciousness of the impertinent
+glances of the captain of the castle there as I ride in."
+
+"Then why do you come?" he had asked point-blank.  But before her
+sudden change of countenance he had been quick to add: "Oh, madame,
+I am full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I am deeply,
+deeply grateful; but - "
+
+"Charity?" she had interrupted sharply, on a laugh that was
+self-mocking.  "Charity?"
+
+"What else, madame?"
+
+"Ask yourself," she had answered, reddening and averting her face
+from his questioning eyes.
+
+"Madame," he had faltered, "I dare not."
+
+"Dare not?"
+
+"Madame, how should I?  I am an old man, broken by sickness,
+disheartened by misfortune, daunted by tribulation - a mere husk
+cast aside by Fortune, whilst you are lovely as one of the angels
+about the Throne of Heaven."
+
+She had looked into the haggard face, into the scars of suffering
+that seared it, and she had answered gently: "Tomorrow you shall
+come to me at Chantenac, my friend."
+
+"I am a Spaniard, for whom to-morrow never comes."
+
+"But it will this time.  To-morrow I shall expect you."
+
+He looked up at her sitting her great black horse beside which he
+had been pacing.
+
+"Better not, madame! Better not!" he had said.
+
+And then he saw the eyes that had been tender grow charged with
+scorn; then came her angry taunt:
+
+"You a Spaniard of Spain!  I do not believe it!"
+
+Oh, there was no doubt that he had angered her.  Women of her
+temperament are quick to anger as to every emotion.  But he had not
+wished to anger her.  God knows it was never the way of Antonio
+Perez to anger lovely women - at least not in this fashion.  And it
+was an ill return for her gentleness and attention to himself.
+Considering this as he sat there now, he resolved that he must make
+amends - the only amends it was possible to make.
+
+An hour later, in one of the regal rooms of the castle, where he
+enjoyed the hospitality of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, he
+announced to that most faithful equerry, Gil de Mesa, his intention
+of riding to Chantenac to-morrow.
+
+"Is it prudent?" quoth Mesa, frowning.
+
+"Most imprudent," answered Don Antonio.  "That is why I go."
+
+And on the morrow he went, escorted by a single groom.  Gil de Mesa
+had begged at first to be allowed to accompany him.  But for Gil he
+had other work, of which the instructions he left were very full.
+The distance was short - three miles along the Gave de Pau - and Don
+Antonio covered it on a gently ambling mule, such as might have been
+bred to bear some aged dignitary of Holy Church.
+
+The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most
+great lords of Bearn.  Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls
+short.  And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual
+complaint than any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved
+matters by a certain habit of gaming contracted in youth.  The
+chateau bore abundant signs of it.  It was a burnt red pile standing
+four-square on a little eminence, about the base of which the river
+went winding turbulently; it was turreted at each of its four angles,
+imposing in its way, but in a sad state of dilapidation and disrepair.
+
+The interior, when Don Antonio reached it, was rather better; the
+furnishings, though sparse, were massive and imposing; the tapestries
+on the walls, if old, were rich and choice.  But everywhere the
+ill-assorted marriage of pretentiousness and neediness was apparent.
+The floors of hall and living-room were strewn with fresh-cut rushes,
+an obsolescent custom which served here alike to save the heavy cost
+of carpets and to lend the place an ancient baronial dignity.  Whilst
+pretence was made of keeping state, the servitors were all old, and
+insufficient in number to warrant the retention of the infirm
+seneschal by whom Don Antonio was ceremoniously received.  A single
+groom, aged and without livery, took charge at once of Don Antonio's
+mule, his servant's horse, and the servant himself.
+
+The seneschal, hobbling before him, conducted our Spaniard across
+the great hall, gloomy and half denuded, through the main living-room
+of the chateau into a smaller, more intimate apartment, holding some
+trace of luxury, which he announced as madame's own room.  And there
+he left him to await the coming of the chatelaine.
+
+She, at least, showed none of the outward disrepair of her
+surroundings.  She came to him sheathed in a gown of shimmering silk
+that was of the golden brown of autumn tints, caught to her waist
+by a slender girdle of hammered gold.  Eyes of deepest blue pondered
+him questioningly, whilst red lips smiled their welcome.  "So you
+have come in spite of all?" she greeted him.  "Be very welcome to
+my poor house, Don Antonio."
+
+And regally she proffered her hand to his homage.
+
+He took it, observing the shapely, pointed fingers, the delicately
+curving nails.  Reluctantly, almost, he admitted to himself how
+complete was her beauty, how absolute her charm.  He sighed - a sigh
+for that lost youth of his, perhaps - as he bowed from his fine,
+lean height to press cold lips of formal duty on that hand.
+
+"Your will, madame, was stronger than my prudence," said he.
+
+"Prudence?" quoth she, and almost sneered.  "Since when has Antonio
+Perez stooped to prudence?"
+
+"Since paying the bitter price of imprudence.  You know my story?"
+
+"A little.  I know, for instance, that you murdered Escovedo - all
+the world knows that.  Is that the imprudence of which you speak?
+I have heard it said that it was for love of a woman that you did
+it."
+
+"You have heard that, too?" he said.  He had paled a little.  "You
+have heard a deal, Marquise.  I wonder would it amuse you to hear
+more, to hear from my own lips this story of mine which all Europe
+garbles?  Would it?"
+
+There was a faint note of anxiety in his voice, a look faintly
+anxious in his eyes.
+
+She scanned him a moment gravely, almost inscrutably.  "What purpose
+can it serve?" she asked; and her tone was forbidding - almost a
+tone of fear.
+
+"It will explain," he insisted.
+
+"Explain what?"
+
+"How it comes that I am not this moment prostrate at your feet; how
+it happens that I am not on my knees to worship your heavenly beauty;
+how I have contrived to remain insensible before a loveliness that
+in happier times would have made me mad."
+
+"Vive Dieu!" she murmured, half ironical.  "Perhaps that needs
+explaining."
+
+"How it became necessary," he pursued, never heeding the interruption,
+"that yesterday you should proclaim your disbelief that I could be,
+as you said, a Spaniard of Spain.  How it happens that Antonio Perez
+has become incapable of any emotion but hate.  Will you hear the
+story - all of it?"
+
+He was leaning towards her, his white face held close to her own, a
+smouldering fire in the dark, sunken eyes that now devoured her.
+
+She shivered, and her own cheeks turned very pale.  Her lips were
+faintly twisted as if in an effort to smile.
+
+"My friend - if you insist," she consented.
+
+"It is the purpose for which I came," he announced.
+
+For a long moment each looked into the other's eyes with a singular
+intentness that nothing here would seem to warrant.
+
+At length she spoke.
+
+"Come," she said, "you shall tell me."
+
+And she waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned
+window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently
+down to the river.
+
+Don Antonio sank into the chair, placing his hat and whip upon the
+floor beside him.  The Marquise faced him, occupying the padded
+window-seat, her back to the light, her countenance in shadow.
+
+And here, in his own words, follows the story that he told her as
+she herself set it down soon after.  Whilst more elaborate and
+intimate in parts, it yet so closely agrees throughout with his own
+famous "Relacion," that I do not hesitate to accept the assurance
+she has left us that every word he uttered was burnt as if by an
+acid upon her memory.
+
+
+THE STORY OF ANTONIO PEREZ
+
+
+As a love-story this is, I think, the saddest that ever was invented
+by a romancer intent upon wringing tears from sympathetic hearts.
+How sad it is you will realize when I tell you that daily I thank
+God on my knees - for I still believe in God, despite what was
+alleged against me by the inquisitors of Aragon - that she who
+inspired this love of which I am to tell you is now in the peace of
+death.  She died in exile at Pastrana a year ago.  Anne de Mendoza
+was what you call in France a great parti.  She came of one of the
+most illustrious families in Spain, and she was a great heiress.
+So much all the world knew.  What the world forgot was that she was
+a woman, with a woman's heart and mind, a woman's natural instincts
+to select her mate.  There are fools who envy the noble and the
+wealthy.  They are little to be envied, those poor pawns in the game
+of statecraft, moved hither and thither at the will of players who
+are themselves no better.  The human nature of them is a negligible
+appendage to the names and rent-rolls that predetermine their place
+upon the board of worldly ambition, a board befouled by blood, by
+slobberings from the evil mouth of greed, and by infamy of every
+kind.
+
+So, because Anne was a daughter of the House of Mendoza, because
+her endowments were great, they plucked her from her convent at the
+age of thirteen years, knowing little more of life than the merest
+babe, and they flung her into the arms of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli,
+who was old enough to have been her father.  But Eboli was a great
+man in Spain, perhaps the greatest; he was, first Minister to
+Philip II, and between his House and that of Mendoza an alliance
+was desired.  To establish it that tender child was sacrificed
+without ruth.  She discovered that life held nothing of all that
+her maiden dreamings had foreseen; that it was a thing of horror
+and greed and lovelessness and worse.  For there was much worse
+to come.
+
+Eboli brought his child-princess to Court.  He wore her lightly as
+a ribbon or a glove, the insignificant appendage to the wealth and
+powerful alliance he had acquired with her.  And at Court she came
+under the eye of that pious satyr Philip.  The Catholic King is very
+devout - perfervidly devout.  He prays, he fasts, he approaches the
+sacraments, he does penance, all in proper season as prescribed by
+Mother Church; he abominates sin and lack of faith - particularly
+in others; he has drenched Flanders in blood that he might wash it
+clean of the heresy of thinking differently from himself in
+spiritual matters, and he would have done the same by England but
+that God - Who cannot, after all, be quite of Philip's way of
+thinking - willed otherwise.  All this he has done for the greater
+honour and glory of his Maker, but he will not tolerate his Maker's
+interference with his own minor pleasures of the flesh.  He is, as
+you would say, a Spaniard of Spain.
+
+This satyr's protruding eyes fell upon the lovely Princess of Eboli
+ - for lovely she was, a very pearl among women.  I spare you
+details.  Eboli was most loyal and submissive where his King was
+concerned, most complacent and accommodating.  That was but logical,
+and need not shock you at all.  To advance his worldly ambitions
+had he taken Anne to wife; why should he scruple, then, to yield
+her again that thus he might advance those ambitions further?
+
+If poor Anne argued at all, she must have argued thus.  For the
+rest, she was told that to be loved by the King was an overwhelming
+honour, a matter for nightly prayers of thankfulness.  Philip was
+something very exalted, hardly human in fact; almost, if not quite,
+divine.  Who and what was Anne that she should dispute with those
+who knew the world, and who placed these facts before her?  Never
+in all her little life had she belonged to herself.  Always had she
+been the property of somebody else, to be dealt with as her owner
+might consider best.  If about the Court she saw some men more
+nearly of her own age - though there were not many, for Philip's
+Court was ever a gloomy, sparsely peopled place - she took it for
+granted that such men were not for her.  This until I taught her
+otherwise, which, however, was not yet a while.  Had I been at Court
+in those days, I think I should have found the means, at whatever
+cost, of preventing that infamy; for I know that I loved her from
+the day I saw her.  But I was of no more than her own age, and I
+had not yet been drawn into that whirlpool.
+
+So she went to the arms of that rachitic prince, and she bore him
+a son - for, as all the world knows, the Duke of Prastana owns
+Philip for his father.  And Eboli increased in power and prosperity
+and the favour of his master, and also, no doubt, in the contempt
+of posterity.  There are times when the thought of posterity and
+its vengeances is of great solace.
+
+It would be some six years later when first I came to Court, brought
+thither by my father, to enter the service of the Prince of Eboli
+as one of his secretaries.  As I have told you, I loved the Princess
+from the moment I beheld her.  From the gossip of the Court I pieced
+together her story, and pitied her, and, pitying her, I loved her
+the more.  Her beauty dazzled me, her charm enmeshed me, and she had
+grown by now in worldly wisdom and mental attainments.  Yet I set a
+mask upon my passion, and walked very circumspectly, for all that by
+nature I was as reckless and profligate as all the world could ever
+call me.  She was the wife of the puissant Secretary of State, the
+mistress of the King.  Who was I to dispute their property to those
+exalted ones?
+
+And another consideration stayed me.  She seemed to love the King.
+Young and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me.  In age he compared
+favourably with her husband he was but thirteen years older than
+herself - but in nothing else.  He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking
+man, weakly of frame, rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks,
+and a countenance that was almost grotesque, with its protruding
+jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike eyes, and yellow tuft of beard.
+A great king, perhaps, this Philip, having so been born; but a
+ridiculous man and an unspeakable lover.  And yet this incomparable
+woman seemed to love him.
+
+Let me pass on.  For ten years I nursed that love of mine in secret.
+I was helped, perhaps, by the fact that in the mean time I had
+married - oh, just as Eboli himself had married, an arrangement
+dictated by worldly considerations - and no better, truer mate did
+ever a man find than I in Juana Coello.  We had children and we
+were happy, and for a season - for years, indeed - I began to think
+that my unspoken passion for the Princess of Eboli was dead and done
+with.  I saw her rarely now, and my activities increased with
+increasing duties.  At twenty-six I was one of the Ministers of the
+Crown, and one of the chief supporters of that party of which Eboli
+was the leader in Spanish politics.  I sat in Philip's Council, and
+I came under the spell of that taciturn, suspicious man, who,
+utterly unlovable as he was, had yet an uncanny power of inspiring
+devotion.  From the spell of it I never quite escaped until after
+long years of persecution.  Yet the discovery that one by nature so
+entirely antipathetic to me should have obtained such sway over my
+mind helped me to understand Anne's attachment to him.
+
+When Eboli died, in 1573, I had so advanced in ability and Royal
+favour that I took his place as Secretary of State, thus becoming
+all but the supreme ruler of Spain.  I do not believe that there
+was ever in Spain a Minister so highly favoured by the reigning
+Prince, so powerful as I became.  Not Eboli himself in his halcyon
+days had been so deeply esteemed of Philip, or had wielded such
+power as I now made my own.  All Europe knows it - for it was to me
+all Europe addressed itself for affairs that concerned the Catholic
+King.
+
+And with my power came wealth - abundant, prodigious wealth.  I was
+housed like a Prince of the blood, and no Prince of the blood ever
+kept greater state than I, was ever more courted, fawned upon, or
+t flattered.  And remember I was young, little more than thirty,
+with all the strength and zest to enjoy my intoxicating eminence.
+I was to my party what Eboli had been, though the nominal leader of
+it remained Quiroga, Archbishop of Toledo.  On the other side was
+the Duke of Alva with his following.
+
+You must know that it was King Philip's way to encourage two rival
+parties in the State, between which he shared his confidence and
+sway.  Thus he stimulated emulation and enlightened his own views
+in the opposing opinions that were placed before him.  But the
+power of my party was absolute in those days, and Alva himself was
+as the dust beneath our feet.
+
+Such eminences, they say, are perilous.  Heads that are very highly
+placed may at any moment be placed still higher - upon a pike.  I
+am all but a living witness to the truth of that, and yet I wonder
+would it so have fallen out with me had I mistrusted that slumbering
+passion of mine for Anne.  I should have known that where such fires
+have once been kindled in a man they never quite die out as long as
+life endures.  Time and preoccupations may overlay them as with a
+film of ashes, but more or less deeply down they smoulder on, and
+the first breath will fan them into flame again.
+
+It was at the King's request I went to see her in her fine Madrid
+house opposite Santa Maria Mayor some months after her husband's
+death.  There were certain matters of heritage to be cleared up,
+and, having regard to her high rank, it was Philip's wish that I
+ - who was by now Eboli's official successor - should wait on her
+in person.
+
+There were documents to be conned and signed, and the matter took
+some days, for Eboli's possessions were not only considerable, but
+scattered, and his widow displayed an acquired knowledge of affairs
+and a natural wisdom that inspired her to probe deeply.  To my
+undoing, she probed too deeply in one matter.  It concerned some
+land - a little property - at Velez.  She had been attached to the
+place, it seemed, and she missed all mention of it from the papers
+that I brought her.  She asked the reason.
+
+"It is disposed of," I told her.
+
+"Disposed of!" quoth she.  "But by whom?"
+
+"By the Prince, your husband, a little while before he died."
+
+She looked up at me - she was seated at the wide, carved
+writing-table, I standing by her side - as if expecting me to say
+more.  As I left my utterance there, she frowned perplexedly.
+
+"But what mystery is this?" she asked me.  "To whom has it gone?"
+
+"To one Sancho Gordo."
+
+"To Sancho Gordo?" The frown deepened.  "The washerwoman's son?
+You will not tell me that he bought it?"
+
+"I do not tell you so, madame.  It was a gift from the Prince, your
+husband."
+
+"A gift!" She laughed.  "To Sancho Gordo!  So the washerwoman's
+child is Eboli's son!"
+
+And again she laughed on a note of deep contempt.
+
+"Madame!" I cried, appalled and full of pity, "I assure you that
+you assume too much.  The Prince - "
+
+"Let be," she interrupted me.  "Do you dream I care what rivals I
+may have had, however lowly they may have been?  The Prince, my
+husband, is dead, and that is very well.  He is much better dead,
+Don Antonio.  The pity of it is that he ever lived, or else that I
+was born a woman."
+
+She was staring straight before her, her hands fallen to her lap,
+her face set as if carved and lifeless, and her voice came hard as
+the sound of one stone beating upon another.
+
+"Do you dream what it can mean to have been so nurtured on
+indignities that there is no anger left, no pride to wound by the
+discovery of yet another nothing but cold, cold hate?  That, Don
+Antonio, is my case.  You do not know what my life has been.  That
+man - "
+
+"He is dead, madame," I reminded her, out of pity.
+
+"And damned, I hope," she answered me in that same cold, emotionless
+voice.  "He deserves no less for all the wrongs he did to me, the
+least of which was the great wrong of marrying me.  For advancement
+he acquired me; for his advancement he bartered and used me and made
+of me a thing of shame."
+
+I was so overwhelmed with grief and love and pity that a groan
+escaped me almost before I was aware of it.  She broke off short,
+and stared at me in haughtiness.
+
+"You presume to pity me, I think," she reproved me.  "It is my own
+fault.  I was wrong to talk.  Women should suffer silently, that
+they may preserve at least a mask of dignity.  Otherwise they incur
+pity - and pity is very near contempt."
+
+And then I lost my head.
+
+"Not mine, not mine!" I cried, throwing out my arms; and though
+that was all I said, there was such a ring in my choking voice that
+she rose stiffly from her seat and stood tense and tall confronting
+me, almost eye to eye, reproof in every line of her.
+
+"Princess, forgive me!" I cried.  "It breaks my heart in pieces to
+hear you utter things that have been in my mind these many years,
+poisoning the devotion that I owed to the late Prince, poisoning
+the very loyalty I owe my King.  You say I pity you.  If that were
+so, none has the better right."
+
+"Who gave it you?" she asked me, breathless.
+
+"Heaven itself, I think," I answered recklessly.  "What you have
+suffered, I have suffered for you.  When I came to Court the infamy
+was a thing accomplished - all of it.  But I gathered it, and
+gathering it, thanked Heaven I had been spared the pain and misery
+of witnessing it, which must have been more than ever I could have
+endured.  Yet when I saw you, when I watched you - your wistful
+beauty, your incomparable grace - there was a time when the thought
+to murder stirred darkly in my mind that I might at least avenge you."
+
+She fell away before me, white to the very lips, her eyes dilating
+as they regarded me.
+
+"In God's name, why?" she asked me in a strangled voice.
+
+"Because I loved you," I replied, "always, always, since the day I
+saw you.  Unfortunately, that day was years too late, even had I
+dared to hope - "
+
+"Antonio!" Something in her voice drew my averted eyes.  Her lips
+had parted, her eyes kindled into life, a flush was stirring in
+her cheeks.
+
+"And I never knew!  I never knew!" she faltered piteously.
+
+I stared.
+
+"Dear Heaven, why did you withhold a knowledge that would have
+upheld me and enheartened me through all that I have suffered?
+Once, long, long agog I hoped - "
+
+"You hoped!"
+
+"I hoped, Antonio - long, long ago."
+
+We were in each other's arms, she weeping on my shoulder as if her
+heart would burst, I almost mad with mingling joy and pain - and
+as God lives there was more matter here for pain than joy.
+
+We sat long together after that, and talked it out.  There was no
+help for it.  It was too late on every count.  On her side there
+was the King, most jealous of all men, whose chattel she was become;
+on mine, there was my wife and children, and so deep and true was
+my love for Anne that it awakened in me thoughts of the loyalty I
+owed Juana, thoughts that had never troubled me hitherto in my
+pleasure-loving life - and this not only as concerned Anne herself,
+but as concerned all women.  There was something so ennobling and
+sanctifying about our love that it changed at once the whole of my
+life, the whole tenor of my ways.  I abandoned profligacy, and
+became so staid and orderly in my conduct that I was scarcely
+recognizable for the Antonio Perez whom the world had known hitherto.
+
+We parted there that day with a resolve to put all this behind us;
+to efface from our minds all memory of what had passed between us!
+Poor fools were we to imagine we could resist the vortex of
+circumstance which had caught us.  For three months we kept our
+engagement scrupulously; and then, at last, resistance mutually
+exhausted, we yielded each to the other, both to Fate.
+
+But because we cherished our love we moved with caution.  I was
+circumspect in my comings and goings, and such were the precautions
+we observed, that for four years the world had little suspicion, and
+certainly no knowledge, that I had inherited from the Prince of
+Eboli more than his office as Secretary of State.  This secrecy was
+necessary as long as Philip lived, for we were both fully aware of
+what manner of vengeance we should have to reckon with did knowledge
+of our relations reach the jealous King.  And I think that but for
+Don John of Austria's affairs, and the intervention in them of the
+Escovedo whom you say - whom the world says I murdered, all might
+have been well to this day.
+
+Escovedo had been, like myself, one of Eboli's secretaries in his
+day, and it was this that won him after Eboli's death a place at
+the Royal Council board.  It was but an inferior place, yet the
+King remarked him for a man shrewd and able, who might one day have
+his uses.
+
+That day was not very long in coming, though the opportunity it
+afforded Escovedo was scarcely such as, in his greedy, insatiable
+ambition, he had hoped for.  Yet the opportunity, such as it was,
+was afforded him by me, and had he used it properly it should have
+carried him far, certainly much farther than his talent and
+condition warranted.
+
+It came about through Don John of Austria's dreams of sovereignty.
+You will have heard - as who has not?  - so much of Don John, the
+natural son of Charles V, that I need tell you little concerning
+him.  In body and soul he was a very different man, indeed, from
+his half-brother Philip of Spain.  As joyous as Philip was gloomy,
+as open and frank as Philip was cloudy and suspicious, and as
+beautiful as Philip was grotesque, Don John was the Bayard of our
+day, the very mirror of all knightly graces.  To the victory of
+Lepanto, which had made him illustrious as a soldier, he had added,
+in '73 - the year of Eboli's death the conquest of Tunis, thereby
+completing the triumph of Christianity over the Muslim in the
+Mediterranean.  Success may have turned his head a little.  He
+was young, you know, and an emperor's son.  He dreamt of an empire
+for himself, of sovereignty, and of making Tunis the capital of
+the kingdom he would found.
+
+We learnt of this.  Indeed, Don John made little secret of his
+intentions.  But they went not at all with Philip's views.  It was
+far from his notions that Don John should go founding kingdoms of
+his own.  His valour and talents were required to be employed for
+the greater honour and glory of the Crown of Spain, and nothing
+further.
+
+Philip consulted me, who was by then the depositary of all his
+secrets, the familiar of his inmost desires.  There was evidence
+that Don John's ambitions were being fomented by his secretary,
+who dreamt, no doubt, of his own aggrandizement in the
+aggrandizement of his master.  Philip proposed the man's removal.
+
+"That would be something," I agreed.  "But not enough.  He must be
+replaced by a man of our own, a man loyal to Your Majesty, who will
+not only seek to guide Don John in the course that he should follow,
+but will keep close watch upon his projects, and warn you should
+they threaten to neglect your interests the interests of Spain for
+his own."
+
+"And such a man?  Where shall we find him?"
+
+I considered a moment, and bethought me of Escovedo.  He was able;
+he had charm and an ingratiating manner; I believed him loyal, and
+imagined that I could quicken that loyalty by showing him that
+advancement would wait upon its observation; he could well be
+spared from the Council, where, as I have said, he occupied a quite
+inferior post; lastly, we were friends, and I was glad of the
+opportunity to serve him, and place him on the road to better things.
+
+All this I said to Philip, and so the matter was concluded.  But
+Escovedo failed me.  His abilities and ingratiating manner endeared
+him quickly to Don John, whilst himself he succumbed entirely, not
+only to Don John of Austria's great personal charm, but also to Don
+John's ambitious projects.  The road to advancement upon which I
+had set him seemed to him long and toilsome by contrast with the
+shorter cut that was offered by his new master's dreams.  He fell
+as the earlier secretary had fallen, and more grievously, for he
+was the more ambitious of the two, and from merely seconding Don
+John's projects, it was not long before he spurred them on, not
+long before he was dreaming dreams of his own for Don John to
+realize.
+
+>From Tunis, which had by now been recovered by the Turks, and any
+hopes concerned with which King Philip had discouraged, the eyes of
+Don John were set, at Escovedo's bidding, I believe, upon the crown
+of England.
+
+He had just been invited by Philip to make ready to take in hand
+the affairs of Flanders, sadly disorganized under the incompetent
+rule of Alva.  It occurred to him that if he were to issue
+victoriously from that enterprise - and so far victory had waited
+upon his every venture - if he were to succeed in restoring peace
+and Spanish order in rebellious Flanders, he would then be able to
+move against England with the Spanish troops under his command,
+overthrow Elizabeth, deliver Mary Stuart from the captivity in which
+she languished, and by marriage with her set the crown of England
+on his brow.  To this great project he sought the support of Rome,
+and Rome accorded it very readily being naturally hostile to the
+heretic daughter of Anne Boleyn.
+
+It was Escovedo himself who went as Don John's secret ambassador to
+the Vatican in this affair Escovedo, who had been placed with Don
+John to act as a curb on that young man's ambitions.  Nor did he
+move with the prudence he should have observed.
+
+Knowledge of what was brewing reached us from the Papal Nuncio in
+Madrid, who came to see me one day in the matter.
+
+"I have a dispatch from Rome," he announced, "in which His Holiness
+instructs me to enjoin upon the King that the expedition against
+England be now executed, and that he consider bestowing its crown
+upon Don John of Austria for the greater honour and glory of Holy
+Church."
+
+I was thunderstruck.  The expedition against England, I knew, was
+no new project.  Three years before a secret envoy from the Queen
+of Scots, an Italian named Ridolfi, had come to propose to Philip
+that, in concert with the Pope, he should reestablish the Catholic
+faith in England and place Mary Stuart upon the throne.  It was a
+scheme attractive to Philip, since it agreed at once with his policy
+and his religion.  But it had been abandoned under the dissuasions
+of Alva, who accounted that it would be too costly even if
+successful.  Here it was again, emanating now directly from the
+Holy See, but in a slightly altered form.
+
+"Why Don John of Austria?" I asked him.
+
+"A great soldier of the faith.  And the Queen of Scots must have a
+husband."
+
+"I should have thought that she had had husbands enough by now,"
+said I.
+
+"His Holiness does not appear to share that view," he answered
+tartly.
+
+"I wonder will the King," said I.
+
+"The Catholic King is ever an obedient child of Mother Church," the
+oily Nuncio reminded me, to reprove my doubt.
+
+But I knew better - that the King's own policy was the measure of
+his obedience.  This the Nuncio should learn for himself; for if
+I knew anything of Philip's mind, I knew precisely how he would
+welcome this proposal.
+
+"Will you see the King now?" I suggested maliciously, anxious to
+witness the humbling of his priestly arrogance.
+
+"Not yet.  It is upon that I came to see you.  I am instructed
+first to consult with one Escoda as to the manner in which this
+matter shall be presented to His Majesty.  Who is Escoda?"
+
+"I never heard of him," said I.  "Perhaps he comes from Rome."
+
+"No, no.  Strange!" he muttered, frowning, and plucked a parchment
+from his sleeve.  "It is here."  He peered slowly at the writing,
+and slowly spelled out the name: "Juan de Escoda."
+
+In a flash it came to me.
+
+"Escovedo you mean," I cried,
+
+"Yes, yes - Escovedo, to be sure," he agreed, having consulted the
+writing once more.  "Where is he?"
+
+"On his way to Madrid with Don John," I informed him.  "He is Don
+John's secretary."
+
+"I will do nothing, then, until he arrives," he said, and took his
+leave.
+
+Oh, monstrous indiscretion!  That dispatch from Rome so cunningly
+and secretly contrived in cipher had yet contained no warning that
+Escovedo's share in this should be concealed.  There are none so
+imprudent as the sly.  I sought the King at once, and told him all
+that I had learnt.  He was aghast.  Indeed, I never saw him more
+near to anger.  For Philip of Spain was not the man to show wrath
+or any other emotion.  He had a fish-like, cold, impenetrable
+inscrutability.  True, his yellow skin grew yellower, his gaping
+mouth gaped wider, his goggle eyes goggled more than usual.  Left
+to himself, I think he would have disgraced Don John and banished
+Escovedo there and then, as he did, indeed, suggest.  And I have
+since had cause enough to wish to God that I had left him to
+himself.
+
+"Who will replace Don John in Flanders?" I asked him quietly.  He
+stared at me.  "He is useful to you there.  Use him, Sire, to
+your own ends."
+
+"But they will press this English business."
+
+"Acquiesce."
+
+"Acquiesce?  Are you mad?"
+
+"Seem to acquiesce.  Temporize.  Answer them, 'One thing at a time.'
+Say, 'When the Flanders business is happily concluded, we will think
+of England.'  Give them hope that success in Flanders will dispose
+you to support the other project.  Thus you offer Don John an
+incentive to succeed, yet commit yourself to nothing."
+
+"And this dog Escovedo?"
+
+"Is a dog who betrays himself by his bark.  We will listen for it."
+
+And thus it was determined; thus was Don John suckled on the windy
+pap of hope when presently he came to Court with Escovedo at his
+heels.  Distended by that empty fare he went off to the Low
+Countries, leaving Escovedo in Madrid to represent him, with secret
+instructions to advance his plans.
+
+Now Escovedo's talents were far inferior to my conception of them.
+
+He was just a greedy schemer, without the wit to dissemble his
+appetite or the patience necessary to secure attainment.
+
+Affairs in Flanders went none too well, yet that did not set a curb
+upon him.  He pressed his master's business upon the King with an
+ardour amounting to disrespect, and disrespect was a thing the awful
+majesty of Philip could never brook.  Escovedo complained of delays,
+of indecision, and finally - in the summer of '76 - he wrote the
+King a letter of fierce upbraidings, criticizing his policy in terms
+that were contemptuous, and which entirely exasperated Philip.
+
+It was in vain I strove to warn the fellow of whither he was
+drifting; in vain I admonished and sought to curb his headlong
+recklessness.  I have said that I had a friendship for him, and
+because of that I took more pains, perhaps, than I should have taken
+in another's case.
+
+"Unless you put some judgment into that head of yours, my friend,
+you will leave it in this business," I told him one day.
+
+He flung into a passion at the admonition, heaped abuse upon me,
+swore that it was I who thwarted him, I who opposed the fulfilment
+of Don John's desires and fostered the dilatory policy of the King.
+
+I left him after that to pursue his course, having no wish to
+quarrel with this headstrong upstart; yet, liking him as I did, I
+spared no endeavour to shield him from the consequences he provoked.
+But that letter of his to Philip made the task a difficult one.
+Philip showed it to me.
+
+"If that man," he said, "had uttered to my face what he has dared
+to write, I do not think I should have been able to contain myself
+without visible change of countenance.  It is a sanguinary letter."
+
+I set myself to calm him as best I could.
+
+"The man is indiscreet, which has its advantage, for we always know
+whither an indiscreet man is heading.  His zeal for his master
+blinds him and makes him rash.  It is better, perhaps, than if he
+were secretive and crafty."
+
+With such arguments I appeased his wrath against the secretary.  But
+I knew that his hatred of Escovedo, his thirst for Escovedo's blood,
+dated from that moment in which Escovedo had forgotten the reverence
+due to majesty.  I was glad when at last he took himself off to
+Flanders to rejoin Don John.  But that was very far from setting a
+term to his pestering.  The Flanders affair was going so badly that
+the hopes of an English throne to follow were dwindling fast.
+Something else must be devised against the worst, and now Don John
+and Escovedo began to consider the acquisition of power in Spain
+itself.  Their ambition aimed at giving Don John the standing of an
+Infante.  Both of them wrote to me to advance this fresh project of
+theirs, to work for their recall, so that they could ally themselves
+with my party - the Archbishop's party - and ensure its continuing
+supreme.  Escovedo wrote me a letter that was little better than an
+attempt to bribe me.  The King was ageing, and the Prince was too
+young to relieve him of the heavy duties of State.  Don John should
+shoulder these, and in so doing Escovedo and myself should be
+hoisted into greater power.
+
+I carried all those letters to the King, and at his suggestion I
+even pretended to lend an ear to these proposals that we might draw
+from Escovedo a fuller betrayal of his real ultimate aims.  It was
+dangerous, and I enjoined the King to move carefully.
+
+"Be discreet," I warned him, "for if my artifice were discovered,
+I should not be of any further use to you at all.  In my conscience
+I am satisfied that in acting as I do I am performing no more than
+my duty.  I require no theology other than my own to understand
+that much."
+
+"My theology," he answered me, "takes much the same view.  You would
+have failed in your duty to God and me had you failed to enlighten
+me on the score of this deception.  These things," he added in a
+dull voice, "appal me."
+
+So I wrote to Don John, urging him as one who counselled him for
+his good, who had no interest but his own at heart, to remain in
+Flanders until the work there should be satisfactorily completed.
+He did so, since he was left no choice in the matter, but the
+intrigues continued.  Later we saw how far he was from having
+forsaken his dreams of England, when I discovered that he had
+engaged the Pope to assist him with six thousand men and one
+hundred and fifty thousand ducats when the time for that adventure
+should be ripe.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, entirely unheralded, Escovedo reappeared
+in Madrid, having come to press Philip in person for reinforcements
+that should enable Don John to finish the campaign.  He brought
+news that there had been a fresh rupture of the patched-up peace,
+that Don John had taken the field once more, and had forcibly made
+himself master of Namur.  This was contrary to all the orders we
+had sent, a direct overriding of Philip's wishes.  The King desired
+peace in the Low Countries because he was in no case just then to
+renew the war, and Escovedo's impudently couched demands completed
+his exasperation.
+
+"My will," he said, "is as naught before the ambitions of these two.
+You sent my clear instructions to Escovedo, who was placed with Don
+John that he might render him pliant to my wishes.  Instead, he
+stiffens him in rebellion.  There must be an end to this man."
+
+"Sire," I cried, "it may be they think to advance your interests."
+
+"Heaven help me!" he cried.  "Did ever villain wear so transparent
+a mask as this dog Escovedo?  To advance my interests - that will
+be his tale, no doubt.  He will advance them where I do not wish
+them advanced; he will advance them to my ruin; he will stake all
+on a success in Flanders that shall be the preliminary to a descent
+upon England in the interests of Don John.  I say there must be an
+end to this man before he works more mischief."
+
+Again I set myself to calm him, as I had so often done before, and
+again I was the shield between Escovedo and the royal lightnings,
+of whose menace to blot him out the fool had no suspicion.  For
+months things hung there, until, in January of '78, when war had
+been forced in earnest upon Spain by Elizabeth's support of the
+Low Countries, Don John won the great victory of Gemblours.  This
+somewhat raised the King's depression, somewhat dissipated his
+overgrowing mistrust of his half-brother, and gave him patience to
+read the letters in which Don John urged him to send money - to
+throw wood on the fire whilst it was alight, or else resign himself
+to the loss of Flanders for all time.  As it meant also resigning
+himself to the loss of all hope of England for all time, Escovedo's
+activities were just then increased a hundredfold.
+
+"Send me money and Escovedo," was the burden of the almost daily
+letters from Don John to me, and at my elbow was Escovedo,
+perpetually pressing me to bend the King to his master's will.
+Another matter on which he pressed me then was that I should obtain
+for himself the governorship of the Castle of Mogro, which commands
+the port of Santander, an ambition this which intrigued me deeply,
+for I confess I could not fathom what it had to do with all the rest.
+
+And then something else happened.  From the Spanish Ambassador at
+the Louvre we learnt one day of a secret federation entered into
+between Don John and the Guises, known as the Defence of the Two
+Crowns.  Its object was as obscure as its title.  But it afforded
+the last drop to the cup of Philip's mistrust.  This time it was
+directly against Don John that he inveighed to me.  And to defend
+Don John, in the interests of common justice, I was forced to place
+the blame where it belonged.
+
+"Nay, Sire," I assured him, "these ambitions are not Don John's.
+With all his fevered dreams of greatness, Don John has ever been,
+will ever be, loyal to his King."
+
+"If you know anything of temptation," he answered me, "you should
+know that there is a breaking-point to every man's resistance of
+it.  How long will Don John remain loyal while Escovedo feeds his
+disloyalty, adds daily to the weight of temptation the burden of
+a fresh ambition?  I tell you, man, I feel safe no longer."  He
+rose up before me, a blotch on his sallow face, his fingers tugging
+nervously at the tuft of straw-coloured beard.  "I tell you some
+blow is about to fall unless we avert it.  This man this fellow
+Escovedo - must be dispatched before he can kill us."
+
+I shrugged and affected carelessness to soothe him.
+
+"A contemptible dreamer," I said.  "Pity him, Sire.  He has his uses.
+To remove him would be to remove a channel through which we can
+always obtain knowledge precisely of what is doing."
+
+Again I prevailed, and there the matter hung a while.  But the King
+was right, his fears were well inspired.  Escovedo, always impatient,
+was becoming desperate under persistent frustration.  I reasoned
+with him - was he not still my friend? - I held him off, urged
+prudence and patience upon him, and generally sought to temporize.
+I was as intent upon saving him from leaving his skin in this
+business as I was, on the other hand, intent upon doing my duty
+without pause or scruple to my King.  But the fool forced my hand.
+A Court is a foul place always, even so attenuated a Court as that
+which Philip of Spain encouraged.  Rumour thrives in it, scandal
+blossoms luxuriantly in its fetid atmosphere.  And rumour and
+scandal had been busy with the Princess of Eboli and me, though I
+did not dream it.
+
+We had been indiscreet, no doubt.  We had been seen together in
+public too often.  We had gone to the play together more than once;
+she had been present with me at a bull-fight on one occasion, and
+it was matter of common gossip, as I was to learn, that I was a too
+frequent visitor at her house.
+
+Another visitor there was Escovedo when in Madrid.  Have I not said
+that in his early days he had been one of Eboli's secretaries?  On
+that account the house of Eboli remained open to him at all times.
+The Princess liked him, was kindly disposed towards him, and
+encouraged his visits.  We met there more than once.  One day we
+left together, and that day the fool set spark to a train that led
+straight to the mine on which, all unconsciously, he stood.
+
+"A word of advice in season, Don Antonio," he said as we stepped
+forth together.  "Do not go so often to visit the Princess."
+
+I sought to pull my arm from his, but he dung to it and pinned it
+to his side.
+
+"Nay, now - nay, now!" he soothed me.  "Not so hot, my friend.
+What the devil have I said to provoke resentment?  I advise you as
+your friend."
+
+"In future advise that other friend of yours, the devil," I answered
+angrily, and pulled my arm away at last.  "Don Juan, you have
+presumed, I think.  I did not seek your advice.  It is yourself that
+stands in need of advice this moment more than any man in Spain."
+
+"Lord of the World," he exclaimed in amiable protest, "listen to
+him!  I speak because I owe friendship to the Princess.  Men whisper
+of your comings and goings, I tell you.  And the King, you know
+well, should he hear of this I am in danger of losing my only friend
+at Court, and so - "
+
+"Another word of this," I broke in fiercely, "now or at any other
+time, and I'll skewer you like a rabbit!"
+
+I had stopped.  My face was thrust within a hand's-breadth of his
+own; I had tossed back my cloak, and my fingers clutched the hilt
+of my sword.  He became grave.  His fine eyes - he had great,
+sombre, liquid eyes, such as you'll scarcely ever see outside of
+Spain - considered me thoughtfully a moment.  Then he laughed
+lightly and fell back a pace.
+
+"Pish!" said he.  "Saint James!  I am no rabbit for your skewering.
+If it comes to skewers, I am a useful man of my hands, Antonio.
+Come, man" - and again he took my arm - "if I presume, forgive it
+out of the assurance that I am moved solely by interest and concern
+for you.  We have been friends too long that I should be denied."
+
+I had grown cool again, and I realized that perhaps my show of anger
+had been imprudent.  So I relented now, and we went our ways
+together without further show of ill-humour on my part, or further
+advice on his.  But the matter did not end there.  Indeed, it but
+began.  Going early in the afternoon of the morrow to visit Anne, I
+found her in tears - tears, as I was to discover, of anger.
+
+Escovedo had been to visit her before me, and he had dared to
+reproach her on the same subject.
+
+"You are talked about, you and Perez," he had informed her, "and
+the thing may have evil consequences.  It is because I have eaten
+our bread that I tell you this for your own good."
+
+She had risen up in a great passion.
+
+"You will leave my house, and never set foot in it again," she had
+told him.  "You should learn that grooms and lackeys have no concern
+in the conduct of great ladies.  It is because you have eaten my
+bread that I tell you this for your own good."
+
+It drove him out incontinently, but it left her in the condition in
+which I was later to discover her.  I set myself to soothe her.  I
+swore that Escovedo should be punished.  But she would not be
+soothed.  She blamed herself for an unpardonable rashness.  She
+should not have taken that tone with Escovedo.  He could avenge
+himself by telling Philip, and if he told Philip, and Philip believed
+him - as Philip would, being jealous and mistrustful beyond all men
+ - my ruin must follow.  She had thought only of herself in
+dismissing him in that high-handed manner.  Coming since to think
+of me it was that she had fallen into this despair.  She clung to
+me in tears.
+
+"Forgive me, Antonio.  The fault is all mine - the fault of all.
+Always have I known that this danger must overhang you as a penalty
+for loving me.  Always I knew it, and, knowing it, I should have
+been stronger.  I should have sent you from me at the first.  But I
+was so starved of love from childhood till I met you.  I hungered
+so for love - for your love, Antonio - that I had not the strength.
+I was weak and selfish, and because I was ready and glad to pay the
+price myself, whatever it should be and whenever asked, I did not
+take thought enough for you."
+
+"Take no thought now," I implored her, holding her close.
+
+"I must.  I can't help it.  I have raised this peril for you.  He
+will go to Philip."
+
+"Not he; he dare not.  I am his only hope.  I am the ladder by which
+he hopes to scale the heaven of his high ambition.  If he destroys
+me, there is the kennel for himself.  He knows it."
+
+"Do you say that to comfort me, or is it really true?"
+
+"God's truth, sweetheart," I swore, and drew her closer.
+
+She was comforted long before I left her.  But as I stepped out
+into the street again a man accosted me.  Evidently he had been on
+the watch, awaiting me.  He fell into step beside me almost before
+I realized his presence.  It was Escovedo.
+
+"So," he said, very sinister, "you'll not be warned."
+
+"Nor will you," I answered, no whit less sinister myself.
+
+It was broad daylight.  A pale March sunshine was beating down upon
+the cobbled streets, and passers-by were plentiful.  There was no
+fingering of hilts or talk of skewering on either side.  Nor must
+I show any of the anger that was boiling in me.  My face was too
+well known in Madrid streets, and a Secretary of State does not
+parade emotions to the rabble.  So I walked stiff and dignified
+amain, that dog in step with me the while.
+
+"She will have told you what I have said to her," he murmured.
+
+"And what she said to you.  It was less than your deserts."
+
+"Groom and lackey, eh?" said he.  "And less than I deserve - a man
+of my estate.  Oh, ho!  Groom and lackey!  Those are epithets to be
+washed out in blood and tears."
+
+"You rant," I said.
+
+"Or else to be paid for - handsomely."  His tone was sly - so sly
+that I answered nothing, for to answer a sly man is to assist him,
+and my business was to let him betray the cause of this slyness.
+Followed a spell of silence.  Then, "Do you know," said he, "that
+several of her relatives are thinking seriously of killing you?"
+
+"Many men have thought seriously of that - so seriously that they
+never attempted it.  Antonio Perez is not easily murdered, Don Juan,
+as you may discover."
+
+It was a boast that I may claim to have since justified.
+
+"Shall I tell you their names?" quoth he.
+
+"If you want to ruin them."
+
+"Ha!"  It was a short bark of a laugh.  "You talk glibly of ruining
+ - but then you talk to a groom and lackey."  The epithets rankled
+in his mind; they were poison to his blood, it seemed.  It takes a
+woman to find words that burn and blister a man.  "Yet groom and
+lackey that I am, I hold you both in the hollow of my hand.  If I
+close that hand, it will be very bad for you, very bad for her.  If,
+for instance, I were to tell King Philip that I have seen her in
+your arms -"
+
+"You dog!"
+
+"I have - I swear to God I have, with these two eyes - at least
+with one of them, applied to the keyhole half an hour ago.  Her
+servants passed me in; a ducat or two well bestowed - you
+understand?"
+
+We had reached the door of my house.  I paused and turned to him.
+
+"You will come in?" I invited.
+
+"As the wolf said to the lamb, eh?  Well, why not?"  And we went in.
+
+"You are well housed," he commented, his greedy, envious eyes
+considering all the tokens of my wealth.  "It were a pity to lose
+so much, I think.  The King is at the Escurial, I am told."
+
+He was.  He had gone thither into retreat, that he might cleanse
+his pious, murky soul against the coming of Eastertide.
+
+"You would not, I am sure, compel me to undertake so tedious a
+journey," said he.
+
+"Will you put off this slyness and be plain?" I bade him.  "You
+have some bargain in your mind.  Propound it."
+
+He did, and left me aghast.
+
+"You have temporized long enough, Perez," he began.  "You have been
+hunting with the dogs and running with the stag.  There must be an
+end to all that.  Stand by me now, and I will make you greater than
+you are, greater than you could ever dream to be.  Oppose me, betray
+me - for I am going to be very frank - and the King shall hear
+things from me that will mean your ruin and hers.  You understand?"
+
+Then came his demands.  First of all the command of the fortress of
+Mogro for himself.  I must obtain him that at once.  Secondly, I
+must see to it that Philip pledged himself to support Don John's
+expedition against England and Elizabeth and to seat Don John upon
+the throne with Mary Stuart for his wife.  These things must come
+about, and quickly, or I perished.  Nor was that all.  Indeed, no
+more than a beginning.  He opened out the vista of his dreams, that
+having blackmailed me on the one hand, he might now bribe me on the
+other.  Once England was theirs, he aimed at no less than a descent
+upon Spain itself.  That was why he wanted Mogro to facilitate a
+landing at Santander.  Thus, as the Christians had originally come
+down from the mountains of the Asturias to drive the Moors from the
+Peninsula, so should the forces of Don John descend again to
+reconquer it for himself.
+
+It was a madman's fancy utterly - fruit of a brain that ambition
+had completely addled; and I do not believe that Don John had any
+part in it or even knowledge of it.  Escovedo saw himself, perhaps,
+upon the throne of one or the other of the two kingdoms as Don
+John's vice-regent - for himself and for me, if I stood by him,
+there was such power in store as no man ever dreamed of.  If I
+refused, he would destroy me.
+
+"And if I go straight to the Escurial and lay this project before
+the King?" I asked him.
+
+He smiled.
+
+"You will force me to tell him that it is a lie invented to deliver
+you from a man who can destroy you by the knowledge he possesses,
+knowledge which I shall at once impart to Philip.  Think what that
+will mean to you.  Think," he added very wickedly, "what it will
+mean to her."
+
+As I am a Christian, I believe that had it been but the consideration
+of myself I would have flung him from my house upon the instant and
+bade him do his worst.  But he was well advised to remind me of her.
+Whatever Philip's punishment of me, it would be as nothing to his
+punishment of that long-suffering woman who had betrayed him.  Oh,
+I assure you it is a very evil, ill judged thing to have a king for
+rival, particularly a fish-souled tyrant of King Philip's kind.
+
+I was all limp with dread.  I passed a hand across my brow, and
+found it chill and moist.
+
+"I am in your hands, Escovedo," I confessed miserably.
+
+"Say, rather, that we are partners.  Forget all else." He was eager,
+joyous, believing all accomplished, such was his faith in my
+influence with Philip.  "And now, Mogro for me, and England for Don
+John.  About it with dispatch."
+
+"The King is in retreat.  We must wait some days."
+
+"Till Easter, then."  And he held out his hand.  I took it limply,
+thus clenching the bargain of infamy between us.  What else was
+there for me.  What, otherwise, was to become of Anne?
+
+Oh, I may have been self-seeking and made the most of my position,
+as was afterwards urged against me.  I may have been extortionate
+and venal, and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs.
+But always was I loyal and devoted to the King.  Never once had I
+been bribed to aught that ran counter to his interests; never until
+now, when at a stroke I had sold my honour and pledged myself to
+this betrayal of my trust.
+
+Not in all Spain was there a more miserable man than I.  All night
+I sat in the room where I was wont to work, and to my wife's
+entreaties that I should take some rest I answered that the affairs
+of Spain compelled attention.  And when morning found me haggard
+and distraught came a courier from Philip with a letter.
+
+"I have letters from Don John," he wrote, "more insistent than ever
+in their tone.  He demands the instant dispatch of money and
+Escovedo.  I have been thinking, and this letter confirms my every
+fear.  I have cause to apprehend some stroke that may disturb the
+public peace and ruin Don John himself if he is allowed to retain
+Escovedo any longer in his service.  I am writing to Don John that
+I will see to it that Escovedo is promptly dispatched as he requests.
+Do you see him dispatched, then, in precise accordance with his
+deserts, and this at once, before the villain kills us."
+
+My skin bristled as I read.  Here was fatality itself at work.
+Philip was at his old fears - and, Heaven knows, he was not without
+justification of his intuitions, as I had learnt by now - that
+Escovedo meditated the most desperate measures.  He was urging me
+again, as he had urged me before, and more than once, to dispatch
+this traitor whose restless existence so perpetually perturbed him.
+I was not deceived as to the meaning he set upon that word
+"dispatch."  I knew quite well the nature of the dispatch he bade
+me contrive.
+
+Conceive now my temptation.  Escovedo dead, I should be safe, and
+Anne would be safe, and this without any such betrayal as was being
+forced upon me.  And that death the King himself commanded a secret,
+royal execution, such as his confessor Frey Diego de Chaves has
+since defended as an expedient measure within the royal prerogative.
+He had commanded it before quite unequivocally, but always I had
+stood between Escovedo and the sword.  Was I to continue in that
+attitude?  Could it humanly be expected of me in all the
+circumstances again to seek to deflect the royal wrath from that
+too daring head?  I was, after all, only a man, subject to the
+temptations of the flesh, and there was a woman whom I loved better
+than my own salvation to whose peace and happiness that fellow
+Escovedo was become a menace.
+
+If he lived, and for as long as he lived, she and I were to be as
+slaves of his will, and I was to drag my honour and my loyalty
+through the foul kennels of his disordered ambitions.  And the King
+my master was bidding me clearly see to it that he died immediately.
+
+I sat down and wrote at once, and the burden of my letter was: "Be
+more explicit, Sire.  What manner of dispatch is it your will that
+Escovedo should be given?"
+
+On the morrow, which was Thursday of Holy Week, that note of mine
+was returned to me, and on the margin of it, in Philip's own hand,
+Escovedo's death-warrant.  "I mean that it would be well to hasten
+the death of this rascal before some act of his should render it
+too late; for he never rests, nor will anything turn him from his
+usual ways.  Do it, then, and do it quickly, before he kills us."
+
+There was no more to be said.  My instructions were clear and
+definite.  Obedience alone remained.  I went about it.
+
+Just as all my life I have been blessed with the staunchest friends,
+so have I, too, been blessed with the most faithful servants.  And
+of these none was more faithful than my steward, Diego Martinez,
+unless, indeed, it be my equerry, Gil de Mesa, who to this day
+follows my evil fortunes.  But Mesa at that time was as yet untried,
+whilst in Diego I knew that I had a man devoted to me heart and
+soul, a man who would allow himself to be torn limb from limb on
+the rack on my behalf.
+
+I placed the affair in Diego's hands.  I told him that I was acting
+under orders from the King, and that the thing at issue was the
+private execution of a dangerous traitor, who could not be brought
+to trial lest there he should impeach of complicity one whose birth
+and blood must be shielded from all scandal.  I bade him get what
+men he required, and see the thing done with the least possible
+delay.  And thereupon I instantly withdrew from Madrid and went to
+Alcala.
+
+Diego engaged five men to assist him in the task; these were a young
+officer named Enriquez, a lackey named Rubio, the two Aragonese -
+Mesa and Insausti - and another whose name was Bosque.  He clearly
+meant to take no chances, but I incline to think that he overdid
+precaution, and employed more hands than were necessary for the job.
+However, the six of them lurked in waiting on three successive
+nights for Escovedo near his house in the little square of Santiago.
+At last, on the night of Easter Monday, March 31st, they caught him
+and dispatched him.  He died almost before he realized himself
+beset, from a sword-thrust with which Insausti transfixed him.  But
+there were at least half a dozen wounds in the body when it was
+found.  Diego, I have said, was a man who made quite certain.
+
+No sooner was it done than they dispersed, whilst the lackey Rubio,
+instantly quitting Madrid, brought me news of the deed to Alcala,
+and the assurance that no arrests had been made.  But there was a
+great ado in Madrid upon the morrow, as you may imagine, for it is
+no everyday occurrence to find a royal secretary murdered in the
+streets.
+
+The alcaldes set out upon a rigorous search, and they began by
+arresting and questioning all who attempted to leave the city.  On
+the next day they harassed with their perquisitions all those who
+let lodgings.  They were still at this work in the evening when I
+returned to Madrid, brought back - as it would seem - from my
+country rest by the news of this murder of my friend and colleague.
+I bore myself as I should have done had I no knowledge of how the
+thing had been contrived.  That was a necessity as imperative as
+it was odious, and no part of it more odious than the visit of
+condolence I was forced to pay to the Escovedo family, which I
+found plunged in grief.
+
+>From the very outset suspicion pointed its finger at me, although
+there were no visible traces to connect me with the deed.  Rumour,
+however, was astir, and as I had powerful friends, so, too, I had
+the powerful enemies which envy must always be breeding for men in
+high places such as mine.  Escovedo's wife mistrusted me, though
+at first she seems equally to have suspected in this deed the hand
+of the Duke of Alva, who was hostile to Don John and all his
+creatures.  Very soon, as a result of this, came the Court alcalde
+to visit and question me.  His stated object was in the hope that
+I might give him information which would lead to the discovery of
+the assassin; but his real object, rendered apparent by the
+searching, insistent nature of his questions, was to lead me to
+incriminate myself.  I presented a bold front.  I pretended to see
+in this, perhaps, the work of the Flemish States.  I deplored - that
+I might remind him of it - my absence from Madrid at the time.
+
+He was followed by another high official, who came in simulated
+friendship to warn me that certain rumours linking me with the deed
+were in circulation, in reality to trap me into some admission, to
+watch my countenance for some betraying sign.
+
+I endured it stoutly, but inwardly I was shaken, as I wrote to
+Philip, giving him full details of what had been said and what
+answers I had returned, what bitter draughts I had been forced to
+swallow.
+
+He wrote in reply: "I find that you answered very well.  Continue
+to be prudent.  They will tell you a thousand things, not for the
+sake of telling them, but in the hope of drawing something out of
+you.  The bitter draughts you mention are inevitable.  But use all
+the dissimulation and address of which you are capable."
+
+We corresponded daily after that, and I told him of every step I
+took; how I kept my men about me, for fear that if they attempted
+to leave Madrid they would be arrested, and how, finally, I
+contrived their departure one by one, under conditions that placed
+them beyond all suspicion.  Juan de Mesa set out for Aragon on a
+mission concerned with the administration of some property of the
+Princess of Eboli's.  Rubio, Insausti, and Enriquez were each given
+an ensign's commission, bearing the King's own signature, and
+ordered to join the armies in various parts of Italy; the first was
+sent to Milan, the second to Sicily, and the last to Naples.  Bosque
+went back to Aragon.  Thus all were placed beyond the reach of the
+active justice of Castile, all save myself - and the King, who wrote
+to me expressing his satisfaction that there had been no arrests.
+
+But rumour continued to give tongue, and the burden of its tale was
+that the murder had been my work, in complicity with the Princess
+of Eboli.  How they came to drag her name into the affair I do not
+know.  It may have been pure malice trading upon its knowledge of
+the relations between us.  She may have lent colour to the charge
+by her own precipitancy in denying it.  She announced indignantly
+that she was being accused, almost before this had come to pass,
+and as indignantly protested against the accusation, and threatened
+those who dared to voice it.
+
+The end of it all was that, a month later, the Escovedo family drew
+up a memorial for the consideration of the King, in which they laid
+the murder to my charge, and Philip consented to receive Don Pedro
+de Escovedo - the dead man's son - and promised him that he would
+consider the memorial, and that he would deliver up to justice
+whomsoever he thought right.  He was embarrassed by these demands
+of the Escovedos, my own danger, his duty as king, and his interests
+as an accomplice, or, rather, as the originator of the deed.
+
+The Escovedos were powerfully seconded by Vasquez, the Secretary of
+the Council, a member of Alva's party, a secret enemy of my own,
+consumed by jealousy of my power, and no longer fearing to disclose
+himself and assail me since he believed himself possessed of the
+means of ruining me.  He spoke darkly to the King of a woman
+concerned in this business, without yet daring to mention Anne by
+name, and urged him for the satisfaction of the State, where evil
+rumours were abroad, to order an inquiry that should reveal the
+truth of the affair.
+
+It was Philip himself who informed me of what had passed, sneering
+at the wildness of rumours that missed the truth so wildly, and when
+I evinced distress at my position, he sought to reassure me; he even
+wrote to me after I had left him: "As long as I live you have
+nothing to fear.  Others may change, but I never change, as you
+should know who know me."
+
+That was a letter that epitomized many others written me in those
+days to Madrid from the Escurial, whither he had returned.  And those
+letters comforted me not only by their expressed assurances, but by
+the greater assurance implicit in them of the King's good faith.  I
+had by now a great mass of his notes dealing with the Escovedo
+business, in almost every one of which he betrayed his own share as
+the chief murderer, showing that I was no more than his dutiful
+instrument in that execution.  With those letters in my power what
+need I ever fear?  Not Philip himself would dare to betray me.
+
+But I went now in a new dread - the dread of being myself murdered.
+There were threats of it in the air.  The Escovedo family and their
+partisans, who included all my enemies, and even some members of the
+Eboli family, who considered that I had sullied the honour of their
+name by my relations with Anne, talked openly of vengeance, so that
+I was driven to surround myself by armed attendants whenever now I
+went abroad.
+
+I appealed again to Philip to protect me.  I even begged him to
+permit me to retire from my Ministerial office, that thus the
+clamant envy that inspired my persecution might be deprived of its
+incentive.  Finally, I begged him to order me to stand my trial,
+that thus, since I was confident that no evidence could be produced
+against me, I should force an acquittal from the courts and lay
+the matter to rest for all time.
+
+"Go and see the President of Castile," he bade me.  "Tell him the
+causes that led to the death of Escovedo, and then let him talk to
+Don Pedro de Escovedo and to Vasquez, so as to induce them to
+desist."
+
+I did as I was bidden, and when the president, who was the Bishop
+of Pati, had heard me, he sent for my two chief enemies.
+
+"I have, Don Pedro," he said, "your memorial to the King in which
+you accuse Don Antonio Perez of the murder of your father.  And I
+am to assure you in the King's name that justice will be done upon
+the murderer, whoever he may be, without regard to rank.  But I am
+first to engage you to consider well what evidence you have to
+justify your charge against a person of such consideration.  For
+should your proofs be insufficient I warn you that matters are
+likely to take a bad turn for yourself.  Finally, before you answer
+me, let me add, upon my word as a priest, that Antonio Perez is as
+innocent as I am."
+
+It was the truth - the absolute truth, so far as it was known to
+Philip and to the Bishop - for, indeed, I was no more than the
+instrument of my master's will.
+
+Don Pedro looked foolish, almost awed.  He was as a man who suddenly
+becomes aware that he has missed stepping over the edge of a chasm
+in which destruction awaited him.  He may have bethought him at last
+that all his rantings had no better authority than suspicions which
+no evidence could support.
+
+"Sir," he faltered, "since you tell me this, I pledge you my word
+on behalf of myself and my family to make no more mention of this
+death against Don Antonio."
+
+The Bishop swung then upon Vasquez, and his brow became furrowed
+with contemptuous anger.
+
+"As for you, sir, you have heard - which was more than your due, for
+it is not your business by virtue of your office, nor have you any
+obligations towards the deceased, such as excuse Don Pedro's
+rashness, to pursue the murderers of Escovedo.  Your solicitude in
+this matter brings you under a suspicion the more odious since you
+are a priest.  I warn you, sir, to abstain, for this affair is
+different far from anything that you imagine."
+
+But envy is a fierce goad, a consuming, irresistible passion,
+corroding wisdom and deaf to all prudent counsels.  Vasquez could
+not abstain.  Ridden by his devil of spite and jealousy, he would
+not pause until he had destroyed either himself or me.
+
+Since Escovedo's immediate family now washed their hands of the
+affair, Vasquez sought out more distant relatives of the murdered
+man, and stirred them up until they went in their turn to pester
+the courts, not only with accusations against myself, but with
+accusations that now openly linked with mine the name of the
+Princess of Eboli.
+
+We were driven to the brink of despair, and in this Anne wrote to
+Philip.  It was a madness.  She made too great haste to excuse
+herself.  She demanded protection from Vasquez and the evil rumours
+he was putting abroad, implored the King to make an example of men
+who could push so far their daring and irreverence, and to punish
+that Moorish dog Vasquez - I dare say there was Moorish blood in
+the fellow's veins - as he deserved.
+
+I think our ruin dated from that letter.  Philip sent for me to the
+Escurial.  He wished to know more precisely what the accusations
+were.  I told him, denying them.  Then he desired of the Princess
+proof of what she alleged against Vasquez, and she had no difficulty
+in satisfying him.  He seemed to believe our assurance that all was
+lies.  Yet he did not move to punish Vasquez.  But then I knew that
+sluggishness was his great characteristic.  "Time and I are one," he
+would say when I pressed on matters.
+
+After that it was open war in the Council between me and Vasquez.
+The climax came when I was at the Escurial.  I had sent a servant
+to Vasquez for certain State papers to be submitted to the King.
+He brought them, and folded in them a fiercely denunciatory letter
+full of insults and injuries, not the least of which was the
+imputation that my blood was not clean, my caste not good.
+
+In a passion I sought Philip, beside myself almost, trembling under
+the insult.
+
+"See, Sire, what this Moorish thief has dared to write me.  It
+transcends all bearing.  Either you take satisfaction for me of
+these insults or you permit me to take it for myself."
+
+He appeared to share my indignation, promised to give me leave to
+proceed against the man, but bade me first wait a while until
+certain business in the competent hands of Vasquez should be
+transacted.  But weeks grew into months, and nothing was done.  We
+were in April of '79, a year after the murder, and I was grown so
+uneasy, so sensitive to dangers about me, that I dared no longer
+visit Anne.  And then Philip's confessor, Frey Diego de Chaves, came
+to me one day with a request on the King's part that I should make
+my peace with Vasquez.
+
+"If he will retract," was my condition.  And Chaves went to see my
+enemy.  What passed between them, what Vasquez may have told him,
+what he may have added to those rumours of my relations with Anne,
+I do not know.  But I know that from that date there was a change
+in the King's attitude towards me, a change in the tone of the
+letters that he sent me, and, this continuing, I wrote to him at
+last releasing him from his promise to afford me satisfaction
+against Vasquez, assuring him that since, himself, he could forgive
+the injuries against us both, I could easily forgive those I had
+received myself, and finally begging his permission to resign my
+office and retire.
+
+Anne had contributed to this.  She had sent for me, and in tears
+had besought me to make my peace with Vasquez since the King desired
+it, and this was no time in which to attempt resistance to his
+wishes.  I remained with her some hours, comforting her, for she was
+in the very depths of despair, persuaded that we were both ruined,
+and inconsolable in the thought that the blame of this was all her
+own.
+
+It may be that I was watched, perhaps more closely than I imagined.
+It may be that spies were close about us, set by the jealous Philip,
+who desired confirmation or refutation of the things he had been
+told, the rumours that were gnawing at his vitals.
+
+I left her, little dreaming that I was never to see her again in this
+life.  That night I was arrested at my house by the Court alcalde
+upon an order from the King.  The paltry reason advanced was my
+refusal to make my peace with Vasquez, and this when already the King
+was in possession of my letter acknowledging my readiness to do so;
+for the King was in Madrid, unknown to me.  He came, it seems, that
+he might be present at another arrest effected that same night.  From
+the porch of the Church of Santa Maria Mayor, he watched his alguazils
+enter the house of the Princess of Eboli, bring her forth, bestow her
+in a waiting carriage that was to bear her away to the fortress of
+Pinto, to an imprisonment which was later exchanged for exile to
+Pastrana lasting as long as life itself.
+
+To sin against a Prince is worse, it seems, than to sin against God
+Himself.  For God forgives, but princes, wounded in their vanity and
+pride, know nothing of forgiveness.
+
+I was kept for four months a prisoner by the alcalde, no charge
+being preferred against me.  Then, because my health was suffering
+grievously from confinement and the anxiety of suspense, I was moved
+to my own house, and detained there for another eight months under
+close guard.  My friends besought the King in vain either to restore
+me to liberty or to bring me to trial.  He told them the affair was
+of a nature very different from anything they deemed, and so evaded
+all demands.
+
+In the summer of 1580, Philip went to Lisbon to take formal
+possession of the crown of Portugal, which he had inherited.  I sent
+my wife to him to intercede for me.  But he refused to see her, and
+so I was left to continue the victim of his vindictive lethargy.
+After a year of this, upon my giving a formal promise to renounce all
+hostility towards Vasquez, and never seek to do him harm in any way,
+I was accorded some degree of liberty.  I was allowed to go out and
+to receive visitors, but not to visit any one myself.
+
+Followed a further pause.  Vasquez was now a man of power, for my
+party had fallen with me, and his own had supplanted it in the royal
+councils.  It was by his work that at last, in '84, I was brought
+to trial upon a charge of corruption and misappropriation.  I knew
+that my enemies had, meanwhile, become possessed of Enriquez, and
+that he was ready to give evidence, that he was making no secret of
+his share in the death of Escovedo, and that the King was being
+pressed by the Escovedos to bring me to trial upon the charge of
+murder.  Instead, the other charge alone was preferred.
+
+It was urged against me that I had kept a greater state than any
+grandee of Spain, that when I went abroad I did so with a retinue
+befitting a prince, that I had sold my favour and accepted bribes
+from foreign princes to guard their interests with the King of Spain.
+
+They sentenced me to two years' imprisonment in a fortress, to be
+followed by ten years of exile, and I was to make, within nine days,
+restitution of some twenty million maravedis* - the alleged extent
+of my misappropriations - besides some jewels and furniture which
+I had received from the Princess of Eboli, and which I was now
+ordered to deliver up to the heirs of the late Prince.
+
+         *Ten thousand pounds, but with at least five times the
+          present purchasing power of that sum.
+
+Perquisitions had been made in my house, and my papers ransacked.
+Well I knew what they had sought.  For the thought of the letters
+that had passed between Philip and myself at the time of Escovedo's
+death must now be troubling his peace of mind.  I had taken due
+precautions when first I had seen the gathering clouds foreshadowing
+this change of weather.  I had bestowed those papers safely in two
+iron-bound chests which had been concealed away against the time
+when I might need them to save my neck.  And because now he failed
+to find what he sought - the evidence of his own share in the deed
+and his present base duplicity - Philip dared not slip the leash
+from those dogs who would be at my throat for the murder of Escovedo.
+That was why he bade them proceed against me only on the lesser
+charge of corruption.
+
+I was taken to the fortress of Turruegano, and there they came to
+demand of me the surrender of my papers which the alcalde had failed
+to discover at my house.  I imagined the uneasiness of Philip in
+dispatching those emissaries.  I almost laughed as I refused.  Those
+papers were my buckler against worse befalling me than had befallen
+already.  Even now, if too hard pressed, I might find the opportunity
+of breaking my bonds by means of them.  I sometimes wonder why I
+did not apply myself to that.  Yet there is small cause for wonder,
+really.  From boyhood, almost, King Philip had been my master.
+Loyalty to him was a habit that went to the very roots of my being.
+I had served him without conscience and without scruple, and the
+notion of betraying him, save as a very last and very desperate
+resource, was inconceivable.  I do not think he ever knew the depth
+and breadth of that loyalty of mine.
+
+My refusal led those sons of dogs to attempt to frighten my wife
+with threats of unmentionable horrors unless she delivered up the
+papers I had secreted.  She and our children were threatened with
+perpetual imprisonment on bread and water if she persisted in
+refusing to surrender them.  But she held out against all threats,
+and remained firm even under the oily persecution to the same end
+of Philip's confessor, Frey Diego.  Finally, I was notified that,
+in view of her stubbornness and my own, she and our children were
+cast into prison, and that there they would remain until I saw fit
+to become submissive to the royal will.
+
+It is a subtle form of mental torture that will bid a man
+contemplate the suffering for his sake to which those who are dear
+to him are being subjected.
+
+I raged and stormed before the officer who brought me this infamous
+piece of news.  I gave vent to my impotent anger in blasphemous
+expressions that were afterwards to be used against me.  The officer
+was subtly sympathetic.
+
+"I understand your grief, Don Antonio," he said.  "Believe me, I
+feel for you - so much that I urge you to set an end to the
+captivity of those dear ones who are innocent, who are suffering
+for your sake."
+
+"And so make an end of myself?" I asked him fiercely.
+
+"Reflection may show that even that is your duty in the
+circumstances."
+
+I looked into his smug face, and I was within an ace of striking
+him.  Then I controlled myself, and my will was snapped.
+
+"Very well," I said.  "The papers shall be surrendered.  Let my
+steward, Diego Martinez, come to me here, and he shall receive my
+instructions to deliver the chests containing them to my wife, that
+she in turn may deliver them to the King."
+
+He withdrew, well pleased.  No doubt he would take great credit to
+himself for this.  Within three days, such haste did they make, my
+faithful steward stood before me in my prison at Turruegano.
+
+You conceive the despair that had overwhelmed me after giving my
+consent, the consciousness that it was my life I was surrendering
+with those papers, - that without them I should be utterly
+defenceless.  But in the three days that were sped I had been
+thinking, and not quite in vain.
+
+Martinez left me with precise instructions, as a result of which
+those two iron-bound chests, locked and sealed, were delivered,
+together with the keys, to the royal confessor.  Martinez was asked
+what they contained.
+
+"I do not know," he answered.  "My orders are merely to deliver
+them."
+
+I can conceive the King's relief and joy in his conviction that
+thus had he drawn my teeth, that betide now what might, I could
+never defend or justify myself.  The immediate sequel took me by
+surprise.  We were at the end of '85, and my health was suffering
+from my confinement and its privations.  And now my captivity was
+mitigated.  My wife Juana even succeeded in obtaining permission
+that I should be taken home to Madrid, and there for fourteen months
+I enjoyed a half liberty, and received the visits of my old friends,
+among whom were numbered most of the members of the Court.
+
+I imagined at first that since my teeth were drawn the King despised
+me, and intended nothing further.  But I was soon to be disillusioned
+on that score.  It began with the arrest of Martinez on a charge of
+complicity in the murder of Escovedo.  And then one day I was again
+arrested, without warning, and carried off for a while to the fortress
+of Pinto.  Thence I was brought back in close captivity to Madrid,
+and there I learnt at last what had been stirring.
+
+In the previous summer King Philip had gone into Aragon to preside
+over the Cortes, and Vasquez, who had gone with him, had seized the
+opportunity to examine the ensign Enriquez, who had, meanwhile,
+denounced himself of complicity in the murder of Escovedo.  Enriquez
+made a full confession - turned accuser under a promise of full
+pardon for himself and charged Mesa, Rubio, and my steward Martinez
+with complicity, denouncing Martinez as the ringleader of the
+business.  The other two, Insausti and Bosque, were already dead.
+
+Immediately Vasquez attempted to seize the survivors.  But Mesa had
+gone to earth in Aragon, and Rubio was with him.  Martinez alone
+remained, and him they seized and questioned.  He remained as cool
+and master of himself as he was true and loyal to me.  Their threats
+made no impression on him.  He maintained that the tale was all a
+lie, begotten of spite, that I had been Escovedo's best friend, that
+I had been greatly afflicted by his death, and that no man could have
+done more than I to discover his real murderers.  They confronted
+him with Enriquez, and the confrontation no whit disturbed him.  He
+handled the traitor contemptuously as a perjured, suborned witness,
+a false servant, a man who, as he proceeded to show, was a scoundrel
+steeped in crime, whose word was utterly worthless, and who, no
+doubt, had been bought to bring these charges against his sometime
+master.
+
+The situation, thanks to Martinez's stoutness, had reached a
+deadlock.  Between the assertions of one man, who was revealed to
+the judges for a worthless scoundrel, and the denials of the other,
+against whom nothing was known, it was impossible for the court of
+inquiry to reach any conclusion.  At least another witness must be
+obtained.  And Vasquez laboured with all his might and arts and
+wiles to draw Rubio out of Aragon into the clutches of the justice
+of Castile.  But he laboured in vain, for I had secretly found the
+means to instruct my trusty Mesa to retain the fellow where he was.
+
+In this inconclusive state of things the months dragged on and my
+captivity continued.  I wrote to Philip, imploring his mercy,
+complaining of these unjust delays on the part of Vasquez, which
+threatened to go on forever, and begging His Majesty to command the
+conclusion of the affair.  That was in August of '8g.  You see how
+time had sped.  All that came of my appeal was at first an increased
+rigour of imprisonment, and then a visit from Vasquez to examine and
+question me upon the testimony of Enriquez.  As you can imagine, the
+attempt to lure me into self-betrayal was completely fruitless.  My
+enemy withdrew, baffled, to go question my wife, but without any
+better success.
+
+Nevertheless, Vasquez proclaimed the charge established against
+myself and Martinez, and allowed us ten days in which to prepare our
+answer.  Immediately upon that Don Pedro de Escovedo lodged a formal
+indictment against us, and I was put into irons.
+
+To rebut the evidence of one single, tainted witness I produced six
+witnesses of high repute, including the Secretary of the Council of
+Aragon.  They testified for me that I was at Alcala at the time of
+Escovedo's death, that I had always been Escovedo's friend, that I
+was a good Christian incapable of such a deed, and that Enriquez
+as an evil man whose word was worthless, a false witness inspired
+by vengeance.
+
+Thus, in spite of the ill-will of my judges and the hatred of my
+enemies, it was impossible legally to condemn me upon the evidence.
+There were documents enough in existence to have proved my part in
+the affair; but not one of them dared the King produce, since they
+would also show me to have been no more than his instrument.  And
+so, desiring my death as it was now clear he did, he must sit
+impotently brooding there with what patience he could command, like
+a gigantic, evil spider into whose web I obstinately refused to
+fling myself.
+
+My hopes began to revive.  When at last the court announced that it
+postponed judgment whilst fresh evidence was sought, there was an
+outcry of indignation on all sides.  This was a tyrannical abuse of
+power, men said; and I joined my voice to theirs to demand that
+judgment be pronounced and my liberty restored to me, pointing out
+that I had already languished years in captivity without any charge
+against me - beyond that of corruption, which had been purged by
+now - having been established.
+
+Then at last the King stirred in his diabolical underground manner.
+He sent his confessor to me in prison.  The friar was mild and benign.
+
+"My poor friend," he said, "why do you allow yourself to suffer in
+this fashion, when a word from you can set a term to it?  Confess
+the deed without fear, since at the same time you can advance a
+peremptory reason of State to justify it."
+
+It was too obvious a trap.  Did I make confession, indeed, upon such
+grounds, they would demand of me proof of what I asserted; and
+meanwhile the documents to prove it had been extorted from me and
+had passed into the King's possession.  In the result I should be
+ruined completely as one who, to the crime of murder, added a wicked,
+insidious falsehood touching the honour of his King.
+
+But I said naught of this.  I met guile with guile.  "Alas!  I have
+been tempted," I answered him.  "But I thank Heaven I have known even
+in my extremity how to resist the temptation of such disloyalty.  I
+cannot forget, Brother Diego, that amongst the letters from the King
+was one that said, 'Be not troubled by anything your enemies may do
+against you.  I shall not abandon you, and be sure their animosity
+cannot prevail.  But you must understand that it must not be
+discovered that this death took place by my order."'
+
+"But if the King were to release you from that command?" he asked.
+
+"When His Majesty in his goodness and generosity sends me a note
+in his own hand to say, 'You may confess that it was by my express
+order that you contrived the death of Escovedo,' then I shall
+thankfully account myself absolved from the silence his service
+imposes on me."
+
+He looked at me narrowly.  He may have suspected that I saw through
+the transparent device to ruin me, and that in a sense I mocked him
+with my answer.
+
+He withdrew, and for some days nothing further happened.  Then the
+rigours of my captivity were still further increased.  I was allowed
+to communicate with no one, and even the alguazil who guarded me was
+forbidden, under pain of death, to speak to me.
+
+And in January I was visited by Vasquez, who brought me a letter
+from the King, not, indeed, addressed to me and in the terms I had
+suggested, but to Vasquez himself, and it ran:
+
+You may tell Antonio Perez from me, and, if necessary, show him this
+letter, that he is aware of my knowledge of having ordered him to
+put Escovedo to death and of the motives which he told me existed
+for this measure; and that as it imports for the satisfaction of my
+conscience that it be ascertained whether or not those motives were
+sufficient, I order him to state them in the fullest detail, and to
+advance proof of what he then alleged to me, which is not unknown
+to yourself, since I have clearly imparted it to you.  When I shall
+have seen his answers, and the reasons he advances, I shall give
+order that such measures be taken as may befit.
+                                                     I, THE KING
+
+You see what a twist he had given to the facts.  It was I who had
+urged the death of Escovedo; it was I who had advanced reasons which
+he had considered sufficient, trusting to my word; and it was
+because of this he had consented to give the order.  Let me confess
+so much, let me prove it, and prove, too, that the motives I had
+advanced were sound ones, or I must be destroyed.  That was all
+clear.  And that false king held fast the two trunks of papers that
+would have given the lie to this atrocious note of his, that would
+have proved that again and again I had shielded Escovedo from the
+death his king designed for him.
+
+I looked into the face of my enemy, and there was a twisted smile
+on my lips.
+
+"What fresh trap is this?" I asked him.  "King Philip never wrote
+that note."
+
+"You should know his hand.  Look closer," he bade me harshly.
+
+"I know his hand - none better.  But I claim, too, to know something
+of his heart.  And I know that it is not the heart of a perjured
+liar such as penned those lines."
+
+That was as near as a man dared to go in expressing his true opinion
+of a prince.
+
+"For the rest," I said, "I do not understand it.  I know nothing of
+the death of Escovedo.  I have nothing to add to what already I have
+said in open court unless it be to protest against you, who are a
+passionate, hostile judge."
+
+Six times in the month that followed did Vasquez come to me,
+accompanied now by a notary, to press me to confess.  At last, seeing
+that no persuasions could bend my obstinacy, they resorted to other
+measures.
+
+"You will drive us to use the torture upon you so that we may loosen
+your tongue!" snarled Vasquez fiercely, enraged by my obduracy.
+
+I laughed at the threat.  I was a noble of Spain, by birth immune
+from torture.  They dared not violate the law.  But they did dare.
+There was no law, human or divine, the King was not prepared to
+violate so that he might slake his vengeance upon the man who had
+dared to love where he had loved.
+
+They delivered me naked into the hands of the executioner, and I
+underwent the question at the rope.  They warned me that if I lost
+my life or the use of any of my limbs, it would be solely by my own
+fault.  I advanced my nobility and the state of my health as
+all-sufficient reasons why the torture should not be applied to me,
+reminding them that for eleven years already I had suffered
+persecution and detention, so that my vigour was all gone.
+
+For the last time they summoned me to answer as the King desired.
+And then, since I still refused, the executioner was recalled, he
+crossed my arms upon my breast, bound them securely, thrust a long
+rod beneath the cord, and, seizing one end of this in either hand,
+gave the first turn.
+
+I screamed.  I could not help it, enfeebled as I was.  But my spirit
+being stouter than my flesh, I still refused to answer.  Not indeed,
+until they had given the rope eight turns, not until it had sliced
+through my muscles and crushed the bone of one of my arms, so that
+to this day it remains of little use to me, did they conquer me.  I
+had reached the limit of endurance.
+
+"In Christ's name, release me!" I gasped.  "I will say anything you
+wish."
+
+Released at last, half swooning, smothered in blood, agonized by
+pain, I confessed that it was myself had procured the death of
+Escovedo for reasons of State and acting upon the orders of the King.
+The notary made haste to write down my words, and, when I had done,
+it was demanded of me that I should advance proof of the State
+reasons which I had alleged.
+
+Oh, I had never been under any delusion on that score, as I have
+shown you.  The demand did not take me by surprise at all.  I was
+waiting for it, knowing that my answer to it would pronounce my
+doom.  But I delivered it none the less.
+
+"My papers have been taken from me, and without them I can prove
+nothing.  With them I could prove my words abundantly."
+
+They left me then.  On the morrow, as I afterwards learnt, they read
+my confession to my devoted Martinez, and the poor fellow, who
+hitherto had remained staunch and silent under every test, seeing
+that there was no further purpose to be served by silence, gave
+them the confirmation they desired of Enriquez's accusation.
+
+Meanwhile, I was very ill, in a raging fever as you may well conceive,
+and in answer to my prayer my own doctor was permitted to visit me
+in prison.  He announced that he found my case extremely grave, and
+that I must perish unless I were relieved.  As a consequence, and
+considering my weakness and the uselessness just then of both my arms,
+one of which was broken, first a page of my own, then other servants,
+and lastly my wife were allowed to come and tend me.
+
+That was at the end of February.  By the middle of April my wounds
+had healed, I had recovered the use of my limbs, though one remains
+half maimed for life, and my condition had undergone a very
+considerable improvement.  But of this I allowed no sign to show,
+no suspicion even.  I continued to lie there day after day in a
+state of complete collapse, so that whilst I was quickly gathering
+strength it was believed by my gaolers that I was steadily sinking,
+and that I should soon be dead.
+
+My only hope, you see, lay now in evasion, and it was for this that
+I was thus craftily preparing.  Once out of Castile I could deal
+with Philip, and he should not find me as impotent, as toothless as
+he believed.  But I go too fast.
+
+One night at last, on April 20th, by when all measures had been
+concerted, and Gil de Mesa awaited me outside with horses - the
+whole having been contrived by my dear wife - I made the attempt.
+My apparent condition had naturally led to carelessness in guarding
+me.  Who would guard a helpless, dying man?  Soon after dark I rose,
+donned over my own clothes a petticoat and a hooded cloak belonging
+to my wife, and thus mufed walked out of my cell, past the guards,
+and so out of the prison unchallenged.  I joined Gil de Mesa,
+discarded my feminine disguise, mounted and set out with him upon
+that ninety-mile journey into Aragon.
+
+We reached Saragossa in safety, and there my first act was to
+surrender myself to the Grand Justiciary of Aragon to stand my trial
+for the murder of Escovedo with which I was charged.
+
+It must have sent a shudder through the wicked Philip when he
+received news of that.  A very stricken man he must have been, for
+he must have suspected something of the truth, that if I dared,
+after all the evidence amassed now against me, including my own
+confession under torture, openly to seek a judgment, it was because
+I must possess some unsuspected means of establishing all the truth
+ - the truth that must make his own name stink in the nostrils of
+the world.  And so it was.  Have you supposed that Antonio Perez,
+who had spent his life in studying the underground methods of
+burrowing statecraft, had allowed himself to be taken quite so
+easily in their snare?  Have you imagined that when I sent for Diego
+Martinez to come to me at Turruegano and instructed him touching
+the surrender of those two chests of documents, that I did not also
+instruct him carefully touching the abstraction in the first
+instance of a few serviceable papers and the renewal of the seals
+that should conceal the fact that he had tampered with the chests?
+If you have thought that, you have done me less than justice.  There
+had been so much correspondence between Philip and myself, so many
+notes had passed touching the death of Escovedo, and there was that
+habit of Philip's of writing his replies in marginal notes to my
+own letters and so returning them, that it was unthinkable he should
+have kept them all in his memory, and the abstraction of three or
+four could not conceivably be detected by him.
+
+Ever since then those few letters, of a most deeply incriminating
+character, selected with great acumen by my steward, had secretly
+remained in the possession of my wife.  Yet I had not dared produce
+them in Castile, knowing that I should instantly have been deprived
+of them, and with them of my last hope.  They remained concealed
+against precisely such a time as this, when, beyond the immediate
+reach of Philip's justice, I should startle the world and clear my
+own character by their production.
+
+You know the ancient privileges enjoyed by Aragon, privileges of
+which the Aragonese are so jealous that a King of Castile may not
+assume the title of King of Aragon until, bareheaded, he shall have
+received from the Grand Justiciary of Aragon the following
+admonition: "We, who are of equal worth and greater power than you,
+constitute you our king on the condition that you respect our
+privileges, and not otherwise."  And to that the king must solemnly
+bind himself by oath, whose violation would raise in revolt against
+him the very cobbles of the streets.  No king of Spain had ever yet
+been found to dare violate the constitution and the fueros of
+Aragon, the independence of their cortes, or parliament, composed
+of the four orders of the State.  The Grand Justiciary's Court was
+superior to any royally constituted tribunal in the kingdom; to that
+court it was the privilege of any man to appeal for justice in any
+cause; and there justice was measured out with a stern impartiality
+that had not its like in any other State of Europe.
+
+That was the tribunal to which I made surrender of my, person and
+my cause.  There was an attempt on the part of Philip to seize me
+and drag me back to Castile and his vengeance.  His officers broke
+into the prison for that purpose, and already I was in their power,
+when the men of the Justiciary, followed by an excited mob, which
+threatened open rebellion at this violation of their ancient rights,
+delivered me from their hands.
+
+Baffled in this - and I can imagine his fury, which has since been
+vented on the Aragonese - Philip sent his representatives and his
+jurists to accuse me before the Court of the Grand Justiciary and
+to conduct my prosecution.
+
+The trial began, exciting the most profound interest, not only in
+Aragon, but also in Castile, which, as I afterwards learnt, had
+openly rejoiced at my escape.  It proceeded with the delays and
+longueurs that are inseparable from the sluggish majesty of the law.
+one of these pauses I wrote to Philip, inviting him to desist, and
+to grant me the liberty to live out my days in peace with my family
+in some remote corner of his kingdom.  I warned him that I was not
+helpless before his persecution, as he imagined; that whilst I had
+made surrender of two chests of papers, I yet retained enough
+authentic documents - letters in his own hand - to make my innocence
+and his guilt apparent in a startling degree, with very evil
+consequences to himself.
+
+His answer was to seize my wife and children and cast them into
+prison, and then order the courts of Madrid to pronounce sentence
+of death against me for the murder of Escovedo.  Such were the sops
+with which he sought to quench his vindictive rage.
+
+Thereupon the trial proceeded.  I prepared my long memorial of the
+affair, supporting it with proofs in the shape of those letters I
+had retained.  And then at last Philip of Spain took fright.  He was
+warned by one of his representatives that there was little doubt I
+should be acquitted on all counts, and, too late, he sought to save
+his face by ordering the cessation of the prosecution he had
+instructed.
+
+He stated that since I had chosen a line of defence, to answer
+which  - as it could be answered - it would be necessary to touch
+upon matters of a secrecy that was inviolable, and to introduce
+personages whose reputation and honour was of more consequence to
+the State than the condemnation of Antonio Perez, he preferred to
+renounce the prosecution before the tribunal of Aragon.  But he
+added a certificate upon his royal word to the effect that my crimes
+were greater than had ever been the crimes of any man, and that,
+whilst he renounced the prosecution before the courts of Aragon, he
+retained the right to demand of me an account of my actions before
+any other tribunal at any future time.
+
+My acquittal followed immediately.  And immediately again that was
+succeeded by fresh charges against me on behalf of the King.  First
+it was sought to prove that I had procured the death of two of my
+servants - a charge which I easily dispersed by proving them to have
+died natural deaths.  Then it was sought to prosecute me on the
+charge of corruption, for which I had once already been prosecuted,
+condemned, and punished.  Confidently I demanded my release, and
+Philip must have ground his teeth in rage to see his prey escaping
+him, to see himself the butt of scorn and contempt for the wrongs
+that it became clear he had done me.
+
+One weapon remained to him, and a terrible weapon this - the Holy
+Office of the Inquisition, a court before which all temporal courts
+must bow and quail.  He launched its power against me, and behold
+me, in the moment when I accounted myself the victor in the unequal
+contest, accused of the dread sin of heresy.  Words lightly weighed
+ - uttered by me in prison under stress - had been zealously
+gathered up y spies.
+
+On one occasion I had exclaimed: "I think God sleeps where my
+affairs are concerned, and I am in danger of losing my faith."  The
+Holy Office held this to be a scandalous proposition, offensive to
+pious ears.
+
+Again, when I heard of the arrest of my wife and children I had
+cried out in rage: "God sleeps!  God sleeps!  There cannot be a God!"
+
+This they argued at length to be rank heresy, since it is man's
+duty positively to believe, and who does not believe is an infidel.
+
+Yet again it seems I had exclaimed: "Should things so come to pass,
+I shall refuse to believe in God!"  This was accounted blasphemous,
+scandalous, and not without suspicion of heresy.
+
+Upon these grounds the Supreme Council of the Inquisition at Madrid
+drew up its impeachment, and delivered it to the inquisitors of
+Aragon at Saragossa.  These at once sent their familiars to demand
+the surrender of me from the Grand Justiciary, in whose hands I
+still remained.  The Grand Justiciary incontinently refused to
+yield me up.
+
+Thereupon the three Inquisitors drew up a peremptory demand,
+addressed to the lieutenants of the Justiciary, summoning them by
+virtue of holy obedience, under pain of greater excommunication, of
+a fine in the case of each of them of one thousand ducats, and
+other penalties to which they might later be condemned, to deliver
+me up within three hours to the pursuivants of the Holy Office.
+
+This was the end of the Justiciary's resistance.  He dared not
+refuse a demand so framed, and surrender of me was duly made.  But
+the news of what was doing had run abroad.  I had no lack of
+friends, whom I instantly warned of what was afoot, and they had
+seen to it that the knowledge spread in an inflammatory manner.
+Saragossa began to stir at once.  Here was a thinly masked violation
+of their ancient privileges.  If they suffered this precedent of
+circumventing their rights, what was to become of their liberties
+in future, who would be secure against an unjust persecution?  For
+their sympathies were all with me throughout that trial.
+
+I was scarcely in the prison of the Holy Office before the dread
+cry of Contrafueros! was ringing through the streets of Saragossa,
+summoning the citizens to arm and come forth in defence of their
+inviolable rights.  They stormed the palace of the Grand Justiciary,
+demanded that he should defend the fueros, to whose guardianship he
+had been elected.  Receiving no satisfaction, they attacked the
+palace of the Inquisition, clamouring insistently that I should
+immediately be returned to the Justiciary's prison, whence I had so
+unwarrantably been taken.
+
+The Inquisitors remained firm a while, but the danger was increasing
+hourly.  In the end they submitted, for the sake of their skins, and
+considering, no doubt, a later vengeance for this outrage upon their
+holy authority.  But it was not done until faggots had been stacked
+against the Holy House, and the exasperated mob had threatened to
+burn them out of it.
+
+"Castilian hypocrites!" had been the insurgent roar.  "Surrender
+your prisoner, or you shall be roasted in the fire in which you roast
+so many!"
+
+Blood was shed in the streets.  The King's representative died of
+wounds that he received in the affray, whilst the Viceroy himself
+was assailed and compelled to intervene and procure my deliverence.
+
+For the moment I was out of danger.  But for the moment only.  There
+was no question now of my enlargement.  The Grand Justiciary,
+intimidated by what had taken place, by the precise expression of
+the King's will, dared not set me at liberty.  And then the Holy
+Office, under the direction of the King, went to work in that
+subterranean way which it has made its own; legal quibbles were
+raised to soothe the sensibilities of the Aragonese with respect to
+my removal from the Justiciary's prison to that of the Holy Office.
+Strong forces of troops were brought to Saragossa to overawe the
+plebeian insolence, and so, by the following September, all the
+preliminaries being concluded, the Inquisition came in force and in
+form to take possession of me.
+
+The mob looked on and murmured; but it was intimidated by the show
+of ordered force; it had perhaps tired a little of the whole affair,
+and did not see that it should shed its blood and lay up trouble
+for itself for the sake of one who, after all, was of no account in
+the affairs of Aragon.  I stood upon the threshold of my ruin.  All
+my activities were to go unrewarded.  Doom awaited me.  And then the
+unexpected happened.  The alguazil of the Holy Office was in the
+very act of setting the gyves upon my legs when the first shot was
+fired, followed almost at once by a fusillade.
+
+It was Gil de Mesa, faithfullest servant that ever any man possessed.
+He had raised an armed band, consisting of some Aragonese gentlemen
+and their servants, and with this he fell like a thunderbolt upon
+the Castilian men-at-arms and the familiars of the Inquisition.  The
+alguazil fled, leaving me one leg free, the other burdened by the
+gyve, and as he fled so fled all others, being thus taken unawares.
+The Inquisitors scuttled to the nearest shelter; the Viceroy threw
+himself into his house and barricaded the door.  There was no one
+to guide, no one to direct.  The soldiery in these circumstances,
+and accounting themselves overpowered, offered no resistance.  They,
+too, fled before the fusillade and the hail of shot that descended
+on them.
+
+Before I realized what had happened, the iron had been struck from
+my leg, I was mounted on a horse, and, with Gil at my side, I was
+galloping out of Saragossa by the gate of Santa Engracia, and
+breasting the slopes with little cause to fear pursuit just yet,
+such was the disorder we had left behind.
+
+And there, very briefly, you have the story of my sufferings and my
+escapes.  Not entirely to be baulked, numerous arrests were made by
+the Inquisitors in Saragossa when order was at last restored.  There
+followed an auto-da-fe, the most horrible and vindictive of all
+those horrors, in which many suffered for having displayed the
+weakness of charity towards a persecuted man.  And, since my body
+was no longer in their clutches, they none the less sentenced me to
+death as contumaciously absent, and my effigy was burnt in the holy
+fires they lighted, amongst the human candles which they offered up
+for the greater honour and glory of a merciful God.  Let me say no
+more, lest I blaspheme in earnest.
+
+After months of wandering and hiding, Gil and I made our way here
+into Navarre, where we remain the guests of Protestant King Henri IV,
+who does not love King Philip any better since he has heard my story.
+
+Still King Philip's vengeance does not sleep.  Twice has he sent
+after me his assassins - since assassination is the only weapon now
+remaining to him.  But his poor tools have each time been taken,
+exposed to Philip's greater infamy and shame - and hanged as they
+deserve who can so vilely serve so vile a master.  It has even been
+sought to bribe my faithful Gil de Mesa into turning his hand
+against me, and that attempt, too, has been given the fullest
+publication.  Meanwhile, my death to-day could no longer avail
+Philip very much.  My memorial is published throughout Europe for
+all to read.  It has been avidly read until Philip of Spain has
+earned the contempt of every upright man.  In his own dominions the
+voice of execration has been raised against him.  One of his own
+nobles has contemptuously announced that Spain under Philip has
+become unsafe for any gentleman, and that a betrayal of a subject
+by his king is without parallel in history.
+
+That is some measure of vengeance.  But if I am spared I shall not
+leave it there.  Henry of Navarre is on the point of turning Catholic
+that his interests may be better served.  Elizabeth of England
+remains.  In her dominions, where thrives the righteous hatred of
+Philip and all the evil that he stands for, I shall find a welcome
+and a channel for the activities that are to show him that Antonio
+Perez lives.  I have sent him word that when he is weary of the
+conflict he can signify his surrender by delivering from their
+prison my wife and children, upon whom he seeks still to visit some
+of the vengeance I have succeeded in eluding.  When he does that,
+then will I hold my hand.  But not before.
+
+"That, madame, is my story," said Don Antonio, after a pause, and
+from narrowing eyes looked at the beauty who had heard him through.
+
+Daylight had faded whilst the tale was telling.  Night was come, and
+lights had long since been fetched, the curtains drawn over the long
+windows that looked out across the parkland to the river.
+
+Twice only had he paused in all that narrative.  Once when he had
+described the avowal of his love for Anne, Princess of Eboli, when
+a burst of sobs from her had come to interrupt him; again when a
+curious bird-note had rung out upon the gathering dusk.  Then he
+stopped to listen.
+
+"Curious that," he had said - "an eagle's cry.  I have not heard it
+these many months, not since I left the hills of Aragon."
+
+Thereafter he had continued to the end.
+
+Considering her now, his glance inscrutable, he said:
+
+"You weep, madame.  Tell me, what is it that has moved you - the
+contemplation of my sufferings, or of your own duplicity?"
+
+She started up, very white, her eyes scared.
+
+"I do not understand you.  What do you mean, sir?"
+
+"I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you
+should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should
+hire it at an assassin's fee to serve the crapulous King of Spain."
+
+He rose and towered before her, a figure at once of anger, dignity,
+and some compassion.
+
+"So much ardour from youth and beauty to age and infirmity was in
+itself suspicious.  The Catholic King has the guile of Satan, I
+remembered.  I wondered, and hoped my suspicions might be unfounded.
+Yet prudence made me test them, that the danger, if it existed,
+should manifest itself and be destroyed.  So I came to tell you all
+my story, so that if you did the thing I feared, you might come to
+the knowledge of precisely what it was you did.  I have learnt whilst
+here that what I suspected is - alas! quite true.  You were a lure,
+a decoy sent to work my ruin, to draw me into a trap where daggers
+waited for me.  Why did you do this?  What was the bribe that could
+corrupt you, lovely lady?"
+
+Sobs shook her.  Her will gave way before his melancholy sternness.
+
+"I do not know by what wizardry you have discovered it!" she cried.
+"It was true; but it is true no longer.  I knew not what I did.  By
+that window, across the meadows, you can reach the river in safety."
+She rose, controlling her emotion that she might instruct him.
+"They wait for you in the enclosed garden."
+
+He smiled wistfully.
+
+"They waited, madame.  They wait no longer, unless it be for death.
+That eagle's cry, thrice repeated, was the signal from my faithful
+Gil, not only that the trap was discovered, but that those who baited
+it were taken.  Suspecting what I did, I took my measures ere I came.
+Antonio Perez, as I have told you, is not an easy man to murder.
+Unlike Philip, I do not make war on women, and I have no reckoning
+to present to you.  But I am curious, madame, to know what led you
+to this baseness."
+
+"I - I thought you evil, and - and they bribed me.  I was offered
+ten thousand ducats for your head.  We are very poor, we Chantenacs,
+and so I fell.  But, sir - sir" - she was on her knees to him now,
+and she had caught his hand in hers- "poor as I am, all that I have
+is yours to do with as you will, to help to avenge yourself upon
+that Spanish monster.  Take what you will.  Take all I have."
+
+His smile grew gentler.  Gently he raised her.
+
+"Madame," he said, "I am myself a sinner, as I have shown you, a
+man unequal to resisting temptation when it took me in its trammels.
+Of all that you offer, I will take only the right to this kiss."
+
+And bending, be bore her hand to his lips.
+
+Then he went out to join Gil and his men, who waited in the
+courtyard, guarding three prisoners they had taken.
+
+Perez considered them by the light of the lantern that Gil held
+aloft for him.
+
+"One of you," he announced, "shall return to Castile and give tidings
+to Philip, his master, that Antonio Perez leaves for England and the
+Court of Elizabeth, to aid her, by his knowledge of the affairs of
+Spain, in her measures against the Catholic King, and to continue
+his holy work, which is to make the name of Philip II stink in the
+nostrils of all honest men.  One of you I will spare for that
+purpose.  You shall draw lots for it in the morning.  The other two
+must hang."
+
+
+
+
+IV.   THE NIGHT OF CHARITY
+
+THE CASE OF THE LADY ALICE LISLE
+
+
+0f all the cases tried in the course of that terrible circuit,
+justly known as the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at
+all in the popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle.  Her
+advanced age, the fact that she was the first woman known in English
+history to have suffered death for no worse an offence than that of
+having exercised the feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further
+fact that, even so, this offence - technical as it was - was never
+fully proved against her, are all circumstances which have left
+their indelible stamp of horror upon the public mind.  There is also
+the further circumstance that hers was the first case tried in the
+West by that terrible Chief Justice, Baron Jeffreys of Wem.
+
+But the feature that renders her case peculiarly interesting to the
+historical psychologist - and it is a feature that is in danger of
+being overlooked - is that she cannot really be said to have suffered
+for the technical offence for which she took her trial.  That was
+the pretext rather than the cause.  In reality she was the innocent
+victim of a relentless, undiscerning Nemesis.
+
+The battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost by the Protestant
+champion, James, Duke of Monmouth.  In the West, which had answered
+the Duke's summons to revolt, there was established now a horrible
+reign of terror reflecting the bigoted, pitiless, vindictive nature
+of the King.  Faversham had left Colonel Percy Kirke in command at
+Bridgwater, a ruthless ruffian, who at one time had commanded the
+"Tangier garrison, and whose men were full worthy of their commander.
+Kirke's Lambs they were called, in an irony provoked by the emblem
+of the Paschal Lamb on the flag of this, the First Tangier Regiment,
+originally levied to wage war upon the infidel.
+
+>From Bridgwater Colonel Kirke made a horrible punitive progress to
+Taunton, where he put up at the White Hart Inn.  Now, there was a
+very solid signpost standing upon a triangular patch of green
+before the door of the White Hart, and Colonel Kirke conceived
+the quite facetious notion of converting this advertisement of
+hospitality into a gallows - a signpost of temporal welfare into
+a signpost of eternity.  So forth he fetched the prisoners he had
+brought in chains from Bridgwater, and proceeded, without any form
+of trial whatsoever, to string them up before the inn.  The story
+runs that as they were hoisted to that improvised gibbet, Kirke
+and his officers, standing at the windows, raised their glasses to
+pledge their happy deliverance; then, when the victims began to
+kick convulsively, Kirke would order the drums to strike up, so
+that the gentlemen might have music for their better dancing.
+
+The colonel, you see, was a humorist, as humour was then understood
+upon the northern shores of Africa, where he had been schooled.
+
+When, eventually, Colonel Kirke was recalled and reprimanded, it
+was not because of his barbarities many of which transcend the
+possibilities of decent print - but because of a lenity which this
+venal gentleman began to display when he discovered that many of
+his victims were willing to pay handsomely for mercy.
+
+Meanwhile, under his reign of terror, men who had cause to fear the
+terrible hand of the King's vengeance went into hiding wherever they
+could.  Among those who escaped into Hampshire, thinking themselves
+safer in a county that had not participated in the war, were a
+dissenting parson named George Hicks, who had been in Monmouth's
+army, and a lawyer named Richard Nelthorp, outlawed for participation
+in the Rye House Plot.  In his desperate quest for shelter, Hicks
+bethought him of the charitable Nonconformist lady of Moyle's Court,
+the widow of that John Lisle who had been one of Cromwell's Lords
+Commissioners of the Great Seal, and most active in bringing King
+Charles I to justice.
+
+John Lisle had fled to Switzerland at the Restoration; but Stuart
+vengeance had followed him, set a price upon his head, and procured
+his murder at Lausanne.  That was twenty years ago.  Since then his
+lady, because she was known to have befriended and sheltered many
+Royalists, and because she had some stout Tory friends to plead for
+her, was allowed to remain in tranquil possession of her estates.
+And there the Lady Alice Lisle - so called by courtesy, since
+Cromwell's titles did not at law survive the Restoration - might
+have ended her days in peace, but that it was written that those
+who hated her - innocent and aged though she was - for the name she
+bore, who included her in the rancour which had procured her
+husband's assassination, were to be fully satisfied.  And the
+instrument of fate was this parson Hicks.  He prevailed upon Dunne,
+a baker of Warminster, and a Nonconformist, to convey to the Lady
+Lisle his prayer for shelter.  With that message Dunne set out on
+July 25th for Ellingham, a journey of some twenty miles.  He went
+by way of Fovant and Chalk to Salisbury Plain.  But as he did not
+know the way thence, he sought out a co-religionist named Barter,
+who undertook, for a consideration, to go with him and direct him.
+
+Together the pair came in the late afternoon of that Saturday to
+the handsome house of Moyle's Court, and to my lady's steward, who
+received them.  Dunne, who appears to have been silly and imprudent,
+states that he is sent to know if my lady will entertain a minister
+named Hicks.
+
+Carpenter, the steward, a staid, elderly fellow, took fright at
+once.  Although he may not have associated an absconding Presbyterian
+parson with the late rebellion, he must have supposed at least that
+he was one of those against whom there were warrants for preaching
+in forbidden private meetings.  So to her ladyship above stairs
+Carpenter conveyed a warning with the message.
+
+But that slight, frail, homely lady of seventy, with kindly eyes of
+a faded blue, smiled upon his fears.  She had sheltered fugitives
+before - in the old days of the Commonwealth - and nothing but good
+had ever come of it.  She would see this messenger.
+
+With misgivings, Carpenter haled Dunne into her presence, and left
+them alone together.  The impression conveyed by Dunne was that
+Hicks was in hiding from the warrants that were out against all
+Nonconformist preachers.  But when he mentioned that Hicks had a
+companion, she desired to know his name.
+
+"I do not know, my lady.  But I do not think he has been in the
+army, either."
+
+She considered a while.  But in the end pity conquered doubt in her
+sweetly charitable soul.
+
+"Very well," she said, "I will give them entertainment for a week.
+Bring them on Tuesday after dark, and come by the back way through
+the orchard, that they may not be seen."
+
+And upon this she rose, and took up an ebony cane, herself to
+reconduct him and to see to his entertainment before he left.  Not
+until they came to the kitchen did she realize that he had a
+companion.  At sight of Barter, who rose respectfully when she
+entered, she checked, turned to Dunne, and whispered something,
+to which his answer provoked from her a laugh.
+
+Now Barter, intrigued by this whispering and laughing, of which he
+deemed himself the object, questioned Dunne upon it as they rode
+forth again together.
+
+"She asked me if you knew aught of the business," replied Dunne;
+"and I answered 'No."'
+
+"Business, say'st thou?" quoth Barter.  "What business?"
+
+"Sure, the business on which we came," Dunne evaded; and he laughed.
+
+It was an answer that left Barter uneasy.  Nor was his mind set at
+rest by the parting words with which Dunne accompanied the half-crown
+for his services.
+
+"This is but an earnest of what's to come if you will meet me here
+on Tuesday to show me the way to Moyle's Court again.  I shall be
+bringing two gentlemen with me - wealthy men, of a half-score
+thousand pounds a year apiece.  I tell you there will be a fine
+booty for my part, so fine that I shall never want for money again
+all the days of my life.  And, so that you meet us here, you too
+may count upon a handsome reward."
+
+Consenting, Barter went his ways home.  But as he pondered Dunne's
+silly speech, and marvelled that honest men should pay so
+disproportionately for an honest service, he came to the reasonable
+conclusion that he had to do with rebels.  This made him so uneasy
+that he resolved at last to lodge information with the nearest
+justice.
+
+Now, it happened, by the irony of Fate, that the justice sought by
+Barter was one Colonel Penruddock - the vindictive son of that
+Penruddock whom the late John Lisle - whilst Lord President of the
+High Court - had sentenced to death some thirty years ago for
+participation in an unsuccessful Wiltshire rising against the
+Commonwealth.
+
+The colonel, a lean, stark man of forty-five, heard with interest
+Barter's story.
+
+"Art an honest fellow!" he commended him.  "What are the names of
+these rogues?"
+
+"The fellow named no names, sir."
+
+"Well, well, we shall discover that for ourselves when we come to
+take them at this trysting-place.  Whither do you say you are to
+conduct them?"
+
+"To Moyle's Court, sir, where my Lady Lisle is to give them
+entertainment."
+
+The colonel stared a moment; then a heavy smile came to light the
+saturnine face under the heavy periwig.  Beyond that he gave no
+sign of what was passing in his mind.
+
+"You may go," he said slowly, at last.  "Be sure we shall be at the
+tryst to take these rascals."
+
+But the colonel did not keep his promise.  To Barter's surprise,
+there were no soldiers at the tryst on Salisbury Plain on the
+following Tuesday; and he was suffered to lead Dunne and the two
+men with him the short, corpulent Mr. Hicks and the long, lean
+Nelthorp - to Moyle's Court without interference.
+
+The rich reward that Dunne had promised him amounted in actual fact
+to five shillings, that he had from Nelthorpe at parting.  Puzzled
+by Colonel Penruddock's failure to do his part, Barter went off at
+once to the colonel's house to inform him that the pair were now at
+Lady Lisle's.
+
+"Why, that is very well," said the colonel, his smile more sinister
+than ever.  "Trouble not yourself about that."
+
+And Barter, the unreasoning instrument of Fate, was not to know that
+the apprehending of a couple of traitorous Jack Presbyters was of
+small account to Colonel Penruddock by comparison with the
+satisfaction of the blood-feud between himself and the House of
+Lisle.
+
+Meanwhile the fugitives were being entertained at Moyle's Court,
+and whilst they sat at supper in a room above-stairs, Dunne being
+still of the party, my lady came in person to see that they had all
+that they required, and stayed a little while in talk with them.
+There was some mention of Monmouth and the battle of Sedgemoor,
+which was natural, that being the topic of the hour.
+
+My lady asked no questions at the time regarding Hicks's long, lean
+companion.  But it occurred to her later that perhaps she should
+know more about him.  Early next morning, therefore, she sent for
+Hicks as he was in the act of sitting down to breakfast, and by her
+direct questions elicited from him that this companion was that
+Richard Nelthorp outlawed for his share in the Rye House Plot.  Not
+only was the information alarming, but it gave her a sense that she
+had not been dealt with fairly, as indeed she told him.
+
+"You will see, sir," she concluded, "that you cannot bide here.  So
+long as I thought it was on the score of Nonconformity alone that
+you were suffering persecution, I was willing to take some risk in
+hiding you.  But since your friend is what he is, the risk is greater
+than I should be asked to face, for my own sake and for that of my
+daughters.  Nor can I say that I have ever held plottings and civil
+war in anything but abhorrence - as much in the old days as now.  I
+am a loyal woman, and as a loyal woman I must bid you take your
+friend hence as soon as your fast is broken."
+
+The corpulent and swarthy Hicks stood dejectedly before her.  He
+might have pleaded, but at that moment there came a loud knocking
+at the gates below, and instantly Carpenter flung into the room
+with a white, scared face and whirling gestures.
+
+"Soldiers, my lady!" he panted in affright.  "We have been betrayed.
+The presence of Mr. Hicks here is known.  What shall we do?  What
+shall we do?"
+
+She stood quite still, her countenance entirely unchanged, unless
+it were to smile a little upon Carpenter's terror.  The mercy of her
+nature rose dominant now.
+
+"Why, we must hide these poor fellows as best we can," said she;
+and Hicks flung down upon one knee to kiss her hand with
+protestations that he would sooner be hanged than bring trouble
+upon her house.
+
+But she insisted, calm and self-contained; and Carpenter carried
+Hicks away to bestow him, together with Dunne, in a hole in the
+malt-house under a heap of sacking.  Nelthorp had already vanished
+completely on his own initiative.
+
+Meanwhile, the insistent knocking at the gate continued.  Came
+shouted demands to open in the name of the King, until from a window
+my lady's daughters looked out to challenge those who knocked.
+
+Colonel Penruddock, who had come in person with the soldiers to raid
+the house of his hereditary foe, stood forth to answer, very stiff
+and brave in his scarlet coat and black plumed hat.
+
+"You have rebels in the house," he announced, "and I require you
+in the King's name to deliver them up to me."
+
+And then, before they could answer him, came Carpenter to, unbar
+the door, and admit them to the court.  Penruddock, standing
+squarely before the steward, admonished him very sternly.
+
+"Friend," said he, "you had best be ingenuous with me and discover
+who are in your lady's house, for it is within my knowledge that
+some strangers came hither last night."
+
+The stricken Carpenter stood white-faced and trembling.
+
+"Sir - sir -" he faltered.
+
+But the colonel was impatient.
+
+"Come, come, my friend.  Since I know they are here, there's an end
+on't.  Show me where they are hid if you would save your own neck
+from the halter."
+
+It was enough for Carpenter.  The pair in the malthouse might have
+eluded all search but for the steward's pusillanimity.  Incontinently,
+he betrayed the hiding-place.
+
+"But, sir, of your charity do not tell my mistress that I have told
+you.  Pray, sir - "
+
+Penruddock brushed him aside as if he had been a pestering fly, and
+with his men went in, and straight to the spot where Hicks and Dunne
+were lurking.  When he had taken them, he swung round on Carpenter,
+who had followed.
+
+"These be but two," he said, "and to my knowledge three rogues came
+hither last night.  No shufing with me, rascal.  Where have you
+bestowed the other?"
+
+"I swear, as Heaven's my witness, I do not know where he is,"
+protested the afflicted steward, truly enough.
+
+Penruddock turned to his men.
+
+"Make search," he bade them; and search was made in the ruthless
+manner of such searches.
+
+The brutal soldiers passed from room to room beating the wainscoting
+with pike and musket-butts, splintering and smashing heedlessly.
+Presses were burst open and their contents scattered; chests were
+broken into and emptied, the searchers appropriating such objects
+as took their fancy, with true military cynicism.  A mirror was
+shattered, and some boards of the floor were torn up because a
+sergeant conceived that the blows of his halbert rang hollow.
+
+When the tumult was at its height, came her ladyship at last into
+the room, where Colonel Penruddock stood watching the operations of
+his men.  She stood in the doorway leaning upon her ebony cane, her
+faded eyes considering the gaunt soldier with reproachful question.
+
+"Sir," she asked him with gentle irony, masking her agitation, "has
+my house been given over to pillage?"
+
+He bowed, doffing his plumed hat with an almost excessive courtesy.
+
+"To search, madame," he corrected her.  And added: "In the King's
+name."
+
+"The King," she answered, "may give you authority to search my
+house, but not to plunder it.  Your men are robbing and destroying."
+
+He shrugged.  It was the way of soldiers.  Fine manners, he
+suggested, were not to be expected of their kind.  And he harangued
+her upon the wrong she had done in harbouring rebels and giving
+entertainment to the King's enemies.
+
+"That is not true," said she.  "I know of no King's enemies."
+
+He smiled darkly upon her from his great height.  She was so frail
+a body and so old that surely it was not worth a man's while to
+sacrifice her on the altar of revenge.  But not so thought Colonel
+Penruddock.  Therefore he smiled.
+
+"Two of them, a snivelling Jack Presbyter named Hicks and a rascal
+named Dunne, are taken already.  Pray, madame, be so free and
+ingenuous with me aye, and so kind to yourself - as if there be any
+other person concealed in your house - and I am sure there is
+somebody else - to deliver him up, and you shall come to no further
+trouble."
+
+She looked up at him, and returned him smile for smile.
+
+"I know nothing," she said, "of what you tell me, or of what you
+ask."
+
+His countenance hardened.
+
+"Then, mistress, the search must go on."
+
+But a shout from the adjoining room announced that it was at an end.
+Nelthorp had been discovered and dragged from the chimney into which
+he had crept.
+
+Almost exactly a month later - on August 27th the Lady Alice Lisle
+was brought to the bar of the court-house at Winchester upon a
+charge of high treason.
+
+The indictment ran that secretly, wickedly, and traitorously she
+did entertain, conceal, comfort, uphold, and maintain John Hicks,
+knowing him to be a false traitor, against the duty of her allegiance
+and against the peace of "our sovereign lord the King that now is."
+
+Demurely dressed in grey, the little white-haired lady calmly faced
+the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys and the four judges of oyer and
+terminer who sat with him, and confidently made her plea of "Not
+Guilty."
+
+It was inconceivable that Christian men should deal harshly with
+her for a technical offence amounting to an act of Christian charity.
+And the judge, sitting there in his robe of scarlet reversed with
+ermine, looked a gentle, kindly man; his handsome, oval, youthful
+face - Jeffreys was in his thirty-sixth year - set in the heavy
+black periwig, was so pale that the mouth made a vivid line of
+scarlet; and the eyes that now surveyed her were large and liquid
+and compassionate, as it seemed to her.
+
+She was not to know that the pallor which gave him so interesting
+an air, and the dark stains which lent his eyes that gentle
+wistfulness, were the advertisements at once of the debauch that
+had kept him from his bed until after two o'clock that morning and
+of the inexorable disease that slowly gnawed away his life and
+enraged him out of all humanity.
+
+And the confidence his gentle countenance inspired was confirmed
+by the first words he had occasion to address to her.  She had
+interrupted counsel to the Crown when, in his opening address to
+the jury - composed of some of the most considerable gentlemen of
+Hampshire - he seemed to imply that she had been in sympathy with
+Monmouth's cause.  She was, of course, without counsel, and must
+look herself to her defence.
+
+"My lord," she cried, "I abhorred that rebellion as much as any
+woman in the world!"
+
+Jeffreys leaned forward with a restraining gesture.
+
+"Look you, Mrs.  Lisle," he admonished her sweetly, "because we
+must observe the common and usual methods of trial in your case I
+must interrupt you now."  And upon that he promised that she should
+be fully heard in her own defence at the proper time, and that
+himself he would instruct her in the forms of law to her advantage.
+He reassured her by reverent allusions to the great Judge of Heaven
+and Earth, in whose sight they stood, that she should have justice.
+"And as to what you say concerning yourself," he concluded, "I pray
+God with all my heart you may be innocent."
+
+He was benign and reassuring.  But she had the first taste of his
+true quality in the examination of Dunne -- a most unwilling witness.
+
+Reluctantly, under the pressure put upon him, did Dunne yield up the
+tale of how he had conducted the two absconders to my lady's house
+with her consent, and it was sought to prove that she was aware of
+their connection with the rebellion.  The stubbornly evasive Dunne
+was asked at last:
+
+"Do you believe that she knew Mr. Hicks before?"
+
+He returned the answer that already he had returned to many
+questions of the sort.
+
+"I cannot tell truly."
+
+Jeffreys stirred in his scarlet robes, and his wistful eyes grew
+terrible as they bent from under beetling brows upon the witness.
+
+"Why," he asked, "dost thou think that she would entertain any one
+she had no knowledge of merely upon thy message?  Mr. Dunne, Mr.
+Dunne!  Have a care.  It may be more is known to me of this matter
+than you think for."
+
+"My lord, I speak nothing but the truth!" bleated the terrified
+Dunne.
+
+"I only bid you have a care," Jeffreys smiled; and his smile was
+more terrible than his frown.  "Truth never wants a subterfuge; it
+always loves to appear naked; it needs no enamel nor any covering.
+But lying and snivelling and canting and Hicksing always appear in
+masquerade.  Come, go on with your evidence."
+
+But Dunne was reluctant to go on, and out of his reluctance he lied
+foolishly, and pretended that both Hicks and Nelthorp were unknown
+to him.  When pressed to say why he should have served two men whom
+he had never seen before, he answered:
+
+"All the reason that induced me to it was that they said they were
+men in debt, and desired to be concealed for a while."
+
+Then the thunder was heard in Jeffreys' voice.
+
+"Dost thou believe that any one here believes thee?  Prithee, what
+trade art thou?"
+
+"My lord," stammered the unfortunate, "I - I am a baker by trade."
+
+"And wilt thou bake thy bread at such easy rates?  Upon my word,
+then, thou art very kind.  Prithee, tell me.  I believe thou dost
+use to bake on Sundays, dost thou not?"
+
+"No, my lord, I do not!" cried Dunne indignantly.
+
+"Alackaday!  Art precise in that," sneered the judge.  "But thou
+canst travel on Sundays to lead rogues into lurking-holes."
+
+Later, when to implicate the prisoner, it was sought to draw from
+Dunne a full account of the reception she had given his companions,
+his terror under the bullying to which he was subjected made him
+contradict himself more flagrantly than ever.  Jeffreys addressed
+the jury.
+
+"You see, gentlemen, what a precious fellow this is; a very pretty
+tool to be employed upon such an errand; a knave that nobody would
+trust for half a crown.  A Turk has more title to an eternity of
+bliss than these pretenders to Christianity."
+
+And as there was no more to be got from Dunne just then, he was
+presently dismissed, and Barter's damning evidence was taken.
+Thereafter the wretched Dunne was recalled, to be bullied by Jeffreys
+in blasphemous terms that may not be printed here.
+
+Barter had told the Court how my lady had come into the kitchen with
+Dunne, and how, when he had afterwards questioned Dunne as to why
+they had whispered and laughed together, Dunne told him she had asked
+"If he knew aught of the business."  Jeffreys sought now to wring
+from Dunne what was this business to which he had so mysteriously
+alluded - this with the object of establishing Lady Lisle's knowledge
+of Hicks's treason.
+
+Dunne resisted more stubbornly than ever.  Jeffreys, exasperated -
+since without the admission it would be difficult to convict her
+ladyship --invited the jury to take notice of the strange, horrible
+carriage of the fellow, and heaped abuse upon the snivelling, canting
+sect of which he was a member.  Finally, he reminded Dunne of his
+oath to tell the truth, and addressed him with a sort of loving
+ferocity.
+
+"What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own
+soul?" bellowed that terrible judge, his eyes aflame.  "Is not this
+the voice of Scripture itself?  And wilt thou hazard so dear and
+precious a thing as thy soul for a lie?  Thou wretch!  All the
+mountains and hills of the world heaped upon one another will not
+cover thee from the vengeance of the Great God for this transgression
+of false-witness bearing."
+
+"I cannot tell what to say, my lord," gasped Dunne.
+
+In his rage to see all efforts vain, the judge's language became
+that of the cockpit.  Recovering at last, he tried gentleness again,
+and very elaborately invited Dunne, in my lady's own interest, to
+tell him what was the business to which he had referred to Barter.
+
+"She asked me whether I did not know that Hicks was a Nonconformist."
+
+"That cannot be all.  There must be something more in it."
+
+"Yes, my lord," Dunne protested, "it is all.  I know nothing more."
+
+"Was there ever such an impudent rascal?" roared the judge.  "Dolt
+think that, after all the pains I have been at to get an answer,
+thou canst banter me with such sham stuff as this?  Hold the candle
+to his brazen face, that we may see it clearly."
+
+Dunne stood terrified and trembling under the glance of those
+terrible eyes.
+
+"My lord," he cried, "I am so baulked, I am cluttered out of my
+senses."
+
+Again he was put down whilst Colonel Penruddock gave his evidence
+of the apprehension of the rebels.  When he had told how he found
+Hicks and Dunne concealed under some stuff in the malt-house,
+Dunne was brought back yet again, that Jeffreys might resume his
+cross-examination.
+
+"Dunne, how came you to hide yourself in the malthouse?"
+
+"My lord," said Dunne foolishly, "I was frighted by the noise."
+
+"Prithee, what needest thou be afraid of, for thou didst not know
+Hicks nor Nelthorp; and my lady only asked thee whether Hicks were
+a Nonconformist parson.  Surely, so very innocent a soul needed
+no occasion to be afraid.  I doubt there was something in the case
+of that business we were talking of before.  If we could but get
+out of thee what it was."
+
+But Dunne continued to evade.
+
+"My lord, I heard a great noise in the house, and did not know what
+it meant.  So I went and hid myself."
+
+"It is very strange thou shouldst hide thyself for a little noise,
+when thou knewest nothing of the business."
+
+Again the witness, with a candle still held close to his nose,
+complained that he was quite cluttered out of his senses, and did
+not know what he was saying.
+
+"But to tell the truth would not rob thee of any of thy senses, if
+ever thou hadst any," Jeffreys told him angrily.  "But it would
+seem that neither thou nor thy mistress, the prisoner, had any; for
+she knew nothing of it either, though she had sent for them thither."
+
+"My lord," cried her ladyship at that, "I hope I shall not be
+condemned without being heard."
+
+"No, God forbid, Mrs.  Lisle," he answered; and then viciously
+flashed forth a hint of the true forces of Nemesis at work against
+her.  "That was a sort of practice in your late husband's time -
+you know very well what I mean - but God be thanked it is not so
+now."
+
+Came next the reluctant evidence of Carpenter and his wife, and
+after that there was yet a fourth equally futile attempt to drag
+from Dunne an admission that her ladyship was acquainted with
+Hicks's share in the rebellion.  But if stupid, Dunne at least was
+staunch, and so, with a wealth of valedictory invective, Jeffreys
+dismissed him, and addressed at last the prisoner, inviting her to
+speak in her own defence.
+
+She rose to do so, fearlessly yet gently.
+
+"My lord, what I have to say is this.  I knew of nobody's coming
+to my house but Mr. Hicks, and for him I was informed that he did
+abscond by reason of warrants that were out against him for
+preaching in private meetings; for that reason I sent to him to
+come by night.  But I had never heard that Nelthorp was to come
+with him, nor what name Nelthorp had till after he had come to my
+house.  I could die upon it.  As for Mr. Hicks, I did not in the
+least suspect that he had been in the army, being a Presbyterian
+minister that used to preach and not to fight."
+
+"But I will tell you," Jeffreys interrupted her, "that there is not
+one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterian rascals but
+one way or the other had a hand in the late horrid conspiracy and
+rebellion."
+
+"My lord, I abhorred both the principles and the practices of the
+late rebellion," she protested; adding that if she had been tried
+in London, my Lady Abergavenny and many other persons of quality
+could have testified with what detestation she had spoken of the
+rebellion, and that she had been in London until Monmouth had been
+beheaded.
+
+"If I had known the time of my trial in the country," she pursued,
+"I could have had the testimony of those persons of honour for me.
+But, my lord, I have been told, and so I thought it would have been,
+that I should not have been tried for harbouring Mr. Hicks until he
+should himself be convict as a traitor.  I did abhor those that were
+in the plot and conspiracy against the King.  I know my duty to my
+King better, and have always exercised it.  I defy anybody in the
+world that ever knew contrary to come and give testimony."
+
+His voice broke harshly upon the pause.  "Have you any more to say?"
+
+"As to what they say to my denying Nelthorp to be in the house," she
+resumed.  "I was in very great consternation and fear of the
+soldiers, who were very rude and violent.  I beseech your lordship
+to make that construction of it, and not harbour an ill opinion of
+me because of those false reports that go about of me, relating to
+my carriage towards the old King, that I was anyways consenting to
+the death of King Charles I; for, my lord, that is as false as God
+is true.  I was not out of my chamber all the day in which that king
+was beheaded, and I believe I shed more tears for him than any other
+woman then living.
+
+"And I do repeat it, my lord, as I hope to attain salvation, I never
+did know Nelthorp, nor did I know of anybody's coming but Mr. Hicks.
+Him I knew to be a Nonconformist minister, and there being, as is
+well known, warrants out to apprehend all Nonconformist ministers,
+I was willing to give him shelter from these warrants, which I knew
+was no treason."
+
+"Have you any more to say for yourself?" he asked her.
+
+"My lord," she was beginning, "I came but five days before this into
+the country."
+
+"Nay," he broke in, "I cannot tell when you came into the country,
+nor I don't care.  It seems you came in time to harbour rebels."
+
+She protested that if she would have ventured her life for anything,
+it would have been to serve the King.
+
+"But, though I could not fight for him myself, my son did; he was
+actually in arms on the King's side in this business.  It was I that
+bred him in loyalty and to fight for the King."
+
+"Well, have you done?" he asked her brutally.
+
+"Yes, my lord," she answered; and resumed her seat, trembling a
+little from the exertion and emotion of her address.
+
+His charge to the jury began.  It was very long, and the first half
+of it was taken up with windy rhetoric in which the Almighty was
+invoked at every turn.  It degenerated at one time into a sermon
+upon the text of "render unto Caesar," inveighing against the
+Presbyterian religion.  And the dull length of his lordship's
+periods, combined with the monotone in which he spoke, lulled the
+wearied lady at the bar into slumber.  She awakened with a start
+when suddenly his fist crashed down and his voice rose in fierce
+denunciation of the late rebellion.  But she was dozing again - so
+calm and so little moved was she - before he had come to apply his
+denunciations to her own case, and this in spite of all her protests
+that she had held the rebellion in abhorrence.
+
+It was all calculated to prejudice the minds of the jurymen before
+he came to the facts and the law of the case.  And that charge of
+his throughout, far from being a judicial summing-up, was a virulent
+address for the prosecution, just as his bearing hitherto in
+examining and cross-examining witnesses had been that of counsel
+for the Crown.  The statement that she had made in her own defence
+he utterly ignored, save in one particular, where he saw his
+opportunity further to prejudice her case.
+
+"I am sorry," he said, his face lengthening, "to remember something
+that dropped even from the gentlewoman herself.  She pretends to
+religion and loyalty very much - how greatly she wept at the death
+of King Charles the Martyr - and owns her great obligations to the
+late king and his royal brother.  And yet no sooner is one in the
+grave than she forgets all gratitude and entertains those that were
+rebels against his royal successor.
+
+"I will not say," he continued with deliberate emphasis, "what hand
+her husband had in the death of that blessed martyr; she has enough
+to answer for her own guilt; and I must confess that it ought not,
+one way or other, to make any ingredient into this case what she was
+in former times."
+
+But he had dragged it in, protesting that it should not influence
+the case, yet coldly, calculatingly intending it to do so.  She was
+the widow of a regicide, reason and to spare in the views of himself
+and his royal master why she should be hounded to her death upon any
+pretext.
+
+Thereafter he reviewed the evidence against her, dwelt upon the
+shuffling of Dunne, deduced that the reason for so much lying was
+to conceal the damning truth - namely, that she knew Hicks for a
+rebel when she gave him shelter, and thus became the partner of his
+horrible guilt.  Upon that he charged them to find their verdict
+"without any consideration of persons, but considering only the
+truth."
+
+Nevertheless, although his commands were clear, some of the jury
+would seem to have feared the God whom Jeffreys invoked so
+constantly.  One of them rose to ask him pertinently, in point of
+law, whether it was treason to have harboured Hicks before the man
+had been convicted of treason.
+
+Curtly he answered them that beyond doubt it was, and upon that
+assurance the jury withdrew, the Court settled down into an expectant
+silence, and her ladyship dozed again in her chair.
+
+The minutes passed.  It was growing late, and Jeffreys was eager to
+be done with this prejudged affair, that he might dine in peace.
+His voice broke the stillness of the court, protesting his angry
+wonder at the need to deliberate in so plain a case.  He was
+threatening to adjourn and let the jury lie by all night if they
+did not bring in their verdict quickly.  When, at the end of a
+half-hour, they returned, his fierce, impatient glance found them
+ominously grave.
+
+"My lord," said Mr. Whistler, the foreman, "we have to beg of your
+lordship some directions before we can bring our verdict.  We have
+some doubt upon us whether there be sufficient proof that she knew
+Hicks to have been in the army."
+
+Well might they doubt it, for there was no proof at all.  Yet he
+never hesitated to answer them.
+
+"There is as full proof as proof can be.  But you are judges of the
+proof.  For my part, I thought there was no difficulty in it."
+
+"My lord," the foreman insisted, "we are in some doubt about it."
+
+"I cannot help your doubts," he said irritably.  "Was there not
+proved a discourse of the battle and of the battle and of the army
+at supper-time?"
+
+"But, my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hicks
+was in the army."
+
+He glowered upon them in silence for a moment.  They deserved to
+be themselves indicted for their slowness to perceive where lay
+their duty to their king.
+
+"I cannot tell what would satisfy you," he said; and sneered.  "Did
+she not inquire of Dunne whether Hicks had been in the army?  And
+when he told her he did not know, she did not say she would refuse
+if he had been, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is
+evident she suspected it."
+
+He ignored, you see, her own complete explanation of that
+circumstance.
+
+"And when Hicks and Nelthorp came, did she not discourse with them
+about the battle and the army?"  (As if that were not at the time
+a common topic of discussion.)  "Come, come, gentlemen," he said,
+with amazing impudence, "it is plain proof."
+
+But Mr. Whistler was not yet satisfied.
+
+"We do not remember, my lord, that it was proved that she asked any
+such question."
+
+That put him in a passion.
+
+"Sure," he bellowed, "you do not remember anything that has passed.
+Did not Dunne tell you there was such a discourse, and she was by?
+But if there were no such proof, the circumstances and management
+of the thing are as full proof as can be.  I wonder what it is you
+doubt of!"
+
+Mrs.  Lisle had risen.  There was a faint flush of excitement on her
+grey old face.
+
+"My lord, I hope - " she began, in trembling tones, to get no further.
+
+"You must not speak now!" thundered her terrible judge; and thus
+struck her silent.
+
+The brief resistance to his formidable will was soon at an end.
+Within a quarter of an hour the jury announced their verdict.  They
+found her guilty.
+
+"Gentlemen," said his lordship, "I did not think I should have
+occasion to speak after your verdict, but, finding some hesitancy
+and doubt among you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about;
+for I think, in my conscience, the evidence was as full and plain
+as it could be, and if I had been among you, and she had been my
+own mother, I should have found her guilty."
+
+She was brought up for sentence on the morrow, together with several
+others subsequently convicted.  Amid fresh invectives against the
+religion she practised, he condemned her to be burned alive - which
+was the proper punishment for high treason - ordering the sheriff
+to prepare for her execution that same afternoon.
+
+"But look you, Mrs. Lisle," he added, "we that are the judges shall
+stay in town an hour or two.  You shall have pen, ink, and paper,
+and if, in the mean time, you employ that pen, ink, and paper and
+that hour or two well - you understand what I mean it may be that
+you shall hear further from us in a deferring of this execution."
+
+What was this meaning that he assumed she understood?  Jeffreys had
+knowledge of Kirke's profitable traffic in the West, and it is known
+that he spared no means of acquiring an estate suitable to his rank
+which he did not possess by way of patrimony.  Thus cynically he
+invited a bribe.
+
+It is the only inference that explains the subsequent rancour he
+displayed against her, aroused by her neglect to profit by his
+suggestions.  The intercession of the divines of Winchester
+procured her a week's reprieve, and in that week her puissant
+friends in London, headed by the Earl of Abergavenny, petitioned
+the King on her behalf.  Even Feversham, the victor of Sedgemoor,
+begged her life of the King - bribed to it, as men say, by an offer
+of a thousand pounds.  But the King withheld his mercy upon the
+plea that he had promised Lord Jeffreys he would not reprieve her,
+and the utmost clemency influential petitions could wring from
+James II was that she should be beheaded instead of burned.
+
+She suffered in the market-place of Winchester on September 2d.
+Christian charity was all her sin, and for this her head was
+demanded in atonement.  She yielded it with a gentle fortitude and
+resolution.  In lieu of speech, she left with the sheriff a pathetic
+document wherein she protests her innocence of all offence against
+the King, and forgives her enemies specifically - the judge, who
+prejudiced her case, and forgot that "the Court should be counsel
+for the prisoner," and Colonel Penruddock, "though he told me he
+could have taken those men before they came to my house."
+
+Between those lines you may read the true reason why the Lady Alice
+Lisle died.  She died to slake the cruelly vindictive thirst of
+King James II on the one hand, and Colonel Penruddock on the other,
+against her husband who had been dead for twenty years.
+
+
+
+
+V.   THE NIGHT OF MASSACRE
+
+THE STORY OF THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW
+
+
+There are elements of mystery about the massacre of Saint Bartholomew
+over which, presumably, historians will continue to dispute as long
+as histories are written.  Indeed, it is largely of their disputes
+that the mystery is begotten.  Broadly speaking, these historians
+may be divided into two schools - Catholic and anti-Catholic.  The
+former have made it their business to show that the massacre was
+purely a political affair, having no concern with religion; the
+latter have been equally at pains to prove it purely an act of
+religious persecution having no concern with politics.  Those who
+adopt the latter point of view insist that the affair was long
+premeditated, that it had its source in something concerted some
+seven years earlier between Catherine of Medicis and the sinister
+Duke of Alva.  And they would seem to suggest that Henry of Navarre,
+the nominal head of the Protestant party, was brought to Paris to
+wed Marguerite de Valois merely so that by this means the Protestant
+nobles of the kingdom, coming to the capital for the wedding, should
+be lured to their destruction.
+
+It does not lie within the purview of the present narrative to enter
+into a consideration of the arguments of the two schools, nor will
+it be attempted.
+
+But it may briefly be stated that the truth lies probably in a
+middle course of reasoning - that the massacre was political in
+conception and religious in execution; or, in other words, that
+statecraft deliberately made use of fanaticism as of a tool; that
+the massacre was brought about by a sudden determination begotten
+of opportunity which is but another word for Chance.
+
+Against the theory of premeditation the following cardinal facts
+may be urged:
+
+(a) The impossibility of guarding for seven years a secret that
+several must have shared;
+
+(b) The fact that neither Charles IX nor his mother Catherine were
+in any sense bigoted Catholics, or even of a normal religious
+sincerity.
+
+(c) The lack of concerted action - so far as the kingdom generally
+was concerned - in the execution of the massacre.
+
+A subsidiary disproof lies in the attempted assassination of Coligny
+two days before the massacre, an act which might, by putting the
+Huguenots on their guard, have caused the miscarriage of the entire
+plan - had it existed.
+
+It must be borne in mind that for years France had been divided by
+religious differences into two camps, and that civil war between
+Catholic and Huguenot had ravaged and distracted the country.  At
+the head of the Protestant party stood that fine soldier Gaspard
+de Chatillon, Admiral de Coligny, virtually the Protestant King of
+France, a man who raised armies, maintaining them by taxes levied
+upon Protestant subjects, and treated with Charles IX as prince
+with prince.  At the head of the Catholic party - the other
+imperium in imperio - stood the Duke of Guise.  The third and
+weakest party in the State, serving, as it seemed, little purpose
+beyond that of holding the scales between the other turbulent two,
+was the party of the King.
+
+The motives and events that precipitated the massacre are set forth
+in the narration of the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou
+(afterwards Henri III).  It was made by him to Miron, his physician
+and confidential servant in Cracow, when he ruled there later as
+King of Poland, under circumstances which place it beyond suspicion
+of being intended to serve ulterior aims.  For partial corroboration,
+and for other details of the massacre itself, we have the narratives,
+among others, of Sully, who was then a young man in the train of the
+King of Navarre, and of Lusignan, a gentleman of the Admiral's
+household.  We shall closely follow these in our reconstruction of
+the event and its immediate causes.
+
+The gay chatter of the gallants and ladies thronging the long
+gallery of the Louvre sank and murmured into silence, and a movement
+was made to yield a free passage to the King, who had suddenly made
+his appearance leaning affectionately upon the shoulder of the
+Admiral de Coligny.
+
+The Duke of Anjou, a slender, graceful young man in a
+gold-embroidered suit of violet, forgot the interest he was taking
+in his beautiful hands to bend lower over the handsome Madame de
+Nemours what time the unfriendly eyes of both were turned upon the
+Admiral.
+
+The King and the great Huguenot leader came slowly down the gallery,
+an oddly contrasting pair.  Coligny would have been the taller by
+a half-head but for his stoop, yet in spite of it there was energy
+and military vigour in his carriage, just as there was a severe
+dignity amounting to haughtiness in his scarred and wrinkled
+countenance.  A bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three
+of his teeth at the battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that
+lost itself in his long white beard.  His forehead was high and
+bald, and his eyes were of a steely keenness under their tufted
+brows.  He was dressed with Calvinistic simplicity entirely in
+black, and just as this contrasted with the King's suit of
+sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of his countenance
+contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign's.
+
+Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was
+of a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes,
+and a thick, pendulous nose.  The protruding upper lip of his long,
+thin mouth gave him an oafish expression, which was increased by
+his habit of carrying his head craned forward.
+
+His nature was precisely what you would have expected from his
+appearance - dull and gross.  He was chiefly distinguished among
+men of birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological
+inventiveness in blasphemy.
+
+At the end of the gallery Coligny stooped to kiss the royal hand in
+leave-taking.  With his other hand Charles patted the Admiral's
+shoulder.
+
+"Count me your friend," he said, "body and soul, heart and bowels,
+even as I count you mine.  Fare you well, my father."
+
+Coligny departed, and the King retraced his steps, walking quickly,
+his head hunched between his shoulders, his baleful eyes looking
+neither to left nor right.  As he passed out, the Duke of Anjou
+quitted the side of Madame de Nemours, and went after him.  Then
+at last the suspended chatter of the courtiers broke loose again.
+
+The King was pacing his cabinet - a simple room furnished with a
+medley of objects appertaining to study, to devotion, and to hunting.
+A large picture of the Virgin hung from a wall flanked on either
+side by an arquebus, and carrying a hunting-horn on one of its upper
+corners.  A little alabaster holy-water font near the door, crowned
+by a sprig of palm, seemed to serve as a receptacle for hawk-bells
+and straps.  There was a writing-table of beautifully carved walnut
+near the leaded window, littered with books and papers - a treatise
+on hunting lay cheek by jowl with a Book of Hours; a string of
+rosary beads and a dog-whip lay across an open copy of Ronsard's
+verses.  The King was quite the vilest poetaster of his day.
+
+Charles looked over his shoulder as his brother entered.  The scowl
+on his face deepened when he saw who came, and with a grunt he
+viciously kicked the liver-coloured hound that lay stretched at
+his feet.  The hound fled yelping to a corner, the Duke checked,
+startled, in his advance.
+
+"Well?" growled the King.  "Well?  Am I never to have peace?  Am I
+never to be alone?  What now?  Bowels of God!  What do you want?"
+
+His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the
+gold hilt of the dagger at his girdle:
+
+Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke
+precipitately withdrew.
+
+"It is nothing.  Another time, since I disturb you now."  He bowed
+and vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.
+
+Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how
+much he feared him in that moment.  But under his fear it is obvious
+that there was lively resentment.  He went straight in quest of his
+mother, whose darling he was, to bear her the tale of the King's
+mood, and what he accounted, no doubt rightly, the cause of it.
+
+"It is the work of that pestilential Huguenot admiral," he
+announced, at the end of a long tirade, "It is always thus with him
+after he has seen Coligny."
+
+Catherine of Medicis considered.  She was a fat, comfortable woman,
+with a thick nose, pinched lips, and sleepy eyes.
+
+"Charles," she said at length, in her monotonous, emotionless voice,
+"is a weathercock that turns with every wind that blows upon him.
+You should know him by now."  And she yawned, so that one who did
+not know her and her habit of perpetually yawning might have
+supposed that she was but indifferently interested.
+
+They were alone together in the intimate little tapestried room she
+called her oratory.  She half sat, half reclined upon a couch of
+rose brocade.  Anjou stood over by the window, his back to it, so
+that his pale face was in shadow.  He considered his beautiful hands,
+which he was reluctant to lower, lest the blood should flow into
+them and mar their white perfection.
+
+"The Admiral's influence over him is increasing," he complained,
+"and he uses it to lessen our own."
+
+"Do I not know it?" came her dull voice.
+
+"It is time to end it," said Anjou passionately, "before he ends us.
+Your influence grows weaker every day and the Admiral's stronger.
+Charles begins to take sides with him against us.  We shall have
+him a tool of the Huguenot party before all is done.  Ah, mon Dieu!
+You should have seen him leaning upon the shoulder of that old
+parpaillot, calling him 'my father,' and protesting himself his
+devoted friend 'body and soul, heart and bowels,' in his own words.
+And when I seek him afterwards, he scowls and snarls at me, and
+fingers his dagger as if he would have it in my throat.  It is
+plain to see upon what subject the old scoundrel entertained him."
+And again he repeated, more fiercely than before: "It is time to
+end it!"
+
+"I know," she said, ever emotionless before so much emotion.  "And
+it shall be ended.  The old assassin should have been hanged years
+ago for guiding the hand that shot Francois de Guise.  Daily he
+becomes a greater danger, to Charles, to ourselves, and to France.
+He is embroiling us with Spain through this Huguenot army he is
+raising to go and fight the battles of Calvinism in Flanders.  A
+fine thing that.  Ah, per Dio!"  For a moment her voice was a
+little warmed and quickened.  "Catholic France at war with Catholic
+Spain for the sake of Huguenot Flanders!"  She laughed shortly.
+Then her voice reverted to its habitual sleepy level.  "You are
+right.  It is time to end it.  Coligny is the head of this
+rebellious beast.  If we cut off the head, perhaps the beast will
+perish.  We will consult the Duke of Guise."  She yawned again.
+"Yes, the Duke of Guise will be ready to lend us his counsel and
+his aid.  Decidedly we must get rid of the Admiral."
+
+That was on Monday, August 18th of that year 1572, and such was the
+firm purpose and energy of that fat and seemingly sluggish woman,
+that within two days all necessary measures were taken, and
+Maurevert, the assassin, was at his post in the house of Vilaine,
+in the Cloisters of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, procured for the
+purpose by Madame de Nemours, who bore the Admiral a mortal hatred.
+
+It was not, however, until the following Friday that Maurevert was
+given the opportunity of carrying out the task to which he had been
+hired.  On that morning, as the Admiral was passing, accompanied
+by a few gentlemen of his household, returning from the Louvre to
+his house in the Rue Betisy, the assassin did his work.  There was
+a sudden arquebusade from a first-floor window, and a bullet smashed
+two fingers of the Admiral's right hand, and lodged itself in the
+muscles of his left arm.
+
+With his maimed and bleeding hand he pointed to the window whence
+the shot had been fired, bidding his gentlemen to force a way into
+the house and take the assassin.  But whilst they were breaking in
+at the front, Maurevert was making his escape by the back, where a
+horse waited for him, and, though pursued, he was never overtaken.
+
+News of the event was instantly borne to the King.  It found him at
+tennis with the Duke of Guise and the Admiral's son-in-law, Teligny.
+
+"In this assassin's work, Sire," said the blunt gentleman whom
+Coligny had sent, "the Admiral desires you to see the proof of the
+worth of the agreement between himself and Monsieur de Guise that
+followed upon the treaty of peace of Saint-Germain."
+
+The Duke of Guise drew himself stiffly up, but said no word.  The
+King, livid with rage, looked at him balefully a moment, then to
+vent some of his fury he smashed his racket against the wall.
+
+"God's Blood!" he cried, mouthing horribly.  "Am I then never to
+have rest?"  He flung away the broken remnants of his racket, and
+went out cursing.  Questioning the messenger further, he learnt
+that the shot had been fired from the house of Vilaine, a sometime
+tutor to the Duke of Guise, and that the horse upon which the
+assassin had fled had been held for him by a groom in the Guise
+livery.
+
+Meanwhile the Duke and Monsieur de Teligny had gone their ways with
+no word spoken between them - Guise to shut himself up in his hotel
+and assemble his friends, Teligny to repair at once to his
+father-in-law.
+
+At two o'clock in the afternoon, in response to an urgent request
+from the Admiral, the King went to visit him, accompanied by the
+Queen-Mother, by his brothers Anjou and Alencon, and a number of
+officers and courtiers.  The royal party saw nothing of the
+excitement which had been prevailing in the city ever since the
+morning's event, an excitement which subsided at their approach.
+The King was gloomy, resentful, and silent, having so far refused
+to discuss the matter with any one, denying audience even to his
+mother.  Catherine and Anjou were vexed by the miscarriage of the
+affair, anxious and no less silent than the King.
+
+They found the Admiral awaiting them, calm and composed.  The
+famous Ambroise Pare had amputated the two broken fingers, and had
+dealt with the wound in the arm.  But although Coligny might be
+considered to have escaped lightly, and not to be in any danger, a
+rumour was abroad that the bullet was poisoned; and neither the
+Admiral nor his people seem to have rejected the possibility.  One
+suspects, indeed, that capital was made out of it.  It was felt,
+perhaps, that thus should the Admiral maintain a greater influence
+with the King.  For in any uncertainty as to whether Coligny would
+live or die, the King's feelings must be more deeply stirred than
+if he knew that the wound carried no peril to life.
+
+Followed closely by his mother and his brothers, Charles swept
+through the spacious ante-chamber, thronged now with grim-faced,
+resentful Huguenot gentlemen, and so entered the room where Coligny
+reclined upon a day bed near the window.  The Admiral made shift
+to rise, but this the King hurried forward to prevent.
+
+"Rest yourself, my dear father!" he cried, in accents of deep
+concern.  "Heart of God!  What is this they have done to you?
+Assure me, at least, that your life is safe, or, by the Mass, I'll - "
+
+"I hold my life from God," the Admiral replied gravely, "and when He
+requires it of me I will yield it up.  That is nothing."
+
+"Nothing?  God's Blood! Nothing?  The hurt is yours, my father, but
+the outrage mine; and I swear to you, by the Blood and the Death,
+that I will take such a vengeance as shall never be forgotten!"
+
+Thereupon he fell into such a storm of imprecation and blasphemy
+that the Admiral, a sincerely devout, God-fearing heretic, shuddered
+to hear him.
+
+"Calm, Sire!" he begged at last, laying his sound hand upon the
+King's velvet sleeve.  " Be calm and listen, for it is not to speak
+of myself, of these wounds, or of the wrong done me, that I have
+presumed to beg you to visit me.  This attempt to murder me is but
+a sign of the evil that is stirring in France to sap your authority
+and power.  But - "  He checked and looked at the three who stood
+immediately behind the King.  "What I have to say is, if you will
+deign to listen, for your private ear."
+
+The King jerked round in a fashion peculiar to him; his every action
+was abrupt and spasmodic.  He eyed his mother and brothers shiftily.
+It was beyond his power to look any one directly in the face.
+
+"Outside!" he commanded, waving an impatient hand almost in their
+faces.  "Do you hear?  Leave me to talk with my father the Admiral."
+
+The young dukes fell back at once, ever in dread of provoking the
+horrible displays of passion that invariably followed upon any
+resistance of his feeble will.  But the sluggish Catherine was not
+so easily moved.
+
+"Is Monsieur de Coligny strong enough, do you think, to treat of
+affairs at present?  Consider his condition, I beg," she enjoined
+in her level voice.
+
+"I thank you for your consideration, madame," said the Admiral, the
+ghost of an ironic smile about his lips.  "But I am strong enough,
+thank God! And even though my strength were less than it is, it
+would be more heavily taxed by the thought that I had neglected my
+duty to His Majesty than it ever could be by the performance of that
+duty."
+
+"Ha!  You hear?" snapped the King.  "Go, then; go!"
+
+They went, returning to the ante-chamber to wait until the audience
+should conclude.  The three stood there in the embrasure of a window
+that looked out upon the hot, sunlit courtyard.  There, as Anjou
+himself tells us, they found themselves hemmed about by some two
+hundred sullen, grim-faced gentlemen and officers of the Admiral's
+party, who eyed them without dissembling their hostility, who
+preserved a silence that was disturbed only by the murmurs of their
+constant whisperings, and who moved to and fro before the royal
+group utterly careless of the proper degree of deference and respect.
+
+Isolated thus in that hostile throng, Catherine and her sons became
+more and more uneasy, so that, as the Queen-Mother afterwards
+confessed, she was never in any place where her tarrying was attended
+by so much fear, or her departure thence by so much pleasure.
+
+It was this fear that spurred her at last to put an end to that
+secret conference in the room beyond.  She did it in characteristic
+manner.  In the most complete outward composure, stifling a yawn as
+she went, she moved deliberately across to the door, her sons
+following, rapped shortly on the panel, and entered without waiting
+to be bidden.
+
+The King, who was standing by the Admiral's side, wheeled sharply
+at the sound of the opening door.  His eyes blazed with sudden anger
+when he beheld his mother, but she was the first to speak.
+
+"My son," she said, "I am concerned for the poor Admiral.  He will
+have the fever if you continue to permit him to weary himself with
+affairs at present.  It is not to treat him as a friend to prolong
+this interview.  Let business wait until he is recovered, which
+will be the sooner if he is given rest at present."
+
+Coligny stroked his white beard in silence, while the King flared
+out, striding towards her:
+
+"Par la Mort Dieu!  What is this sudden concern for the Admiral?"
+
+"Not sudden, my son," she answered in her dull voice, her eyes
+intent upon him, with something magnetic in their sleepy glance that
+seemed to rob him of half his will.  "None knows more accurately
+than I the Admiral's precise, value to France."
+
+Anjou behind her may have smiled at that equivocal phrase.
+
+"God's Bowels!  Am I King, or what am I?"
+
+"It ill becomes a king to abuse the strength of a poor wounded
+subject," she returned, her eyes ever regarding him steadily.
+"Come, Charles.  Another day, when the Admiral shall have recovered
+more fully, you may continue this discourse.  Come now."
+
+His anger was subdued to mere sullenness, almost infantile in its
+outward petulant expression.  He attempted to meet her glance, and
+he was completely lost.
+
+"Perhaps . . . Ah, Ventre Dieu, my mother is right!  Let the matter
+rest, then, my father.  We will talk of it again as soon as you are
+well."
+
+He stepped up to the couch, and held out his hand.
+
+Coligny took it, and his eyes looked up wistfully into the weak
+young face of his King.
+
+"I thank you, Sire, for coming and for hearing me.  Another day, if
+I am spared, I may tell you more.  Meanwhile, bear well in mind what
+I have said already.  I have no interests in this world but your
+own, Sire."  And he kissed the royal hand in farewell.
+
+Not until they were back in the Louvre did the Queen attempt to
+break upon the King's gloomy abstraction, to learn - as learn she
+must - the subject of the Admiral's confidential communication.
+
+Accompanied by Anjou, she sought him in his cabinet, nor would she
+be denied.  He sat at his writing-table, his head sunken between
+his shoulders, his receding chin in his cupped palms.  He glared at
+the pair as they entered, swore savagely, and demanded their
+business with him.
+
+Catherine sat down with massive calm.  Anjou remained standing
+beside and slightly behind her, leaning upon the back of her tall
+chair.
+
+"My son," she said bluntly, "I have come to learn what passed
+between you and Coligny."
+
+"What passed?  What concern is that of yours?"
+
+"All your concerns are mine," she answered tranquilly.  "I am your
+mother."
+
+"And I am your king!" he answered, banging the table.  "And I mean
+to be king!"
+
+"By the grace of God and the favour of Monsieur de Coligny," she
+sneered, with unruffled calm.
+
+"What's that?"  His mouth fell open, and his eyes stared.  A crimson
+flush overspread his muddy complexion.  "What's that?"
+
+Her dull glance met and held his own whilst calmly she repeated her
+sneering words.
+
+"And that is why I have come to you," she added.  "If you are unable
+to rule without guidance, I must at least do what I can so that the
+guidance shall not be that of a rebel, of one who guides you to the
+end that he may master you."
+
+"Master me!" he screamed.  He rose in his indignation and faced her.
+But his glance, unable to support her steady eyes, faltered and fell
+away.  Foul oaths poured from his royal lips.  "Master me!" he
+repeated.
+
+"Aye - master you," she answered him.  "Master you until the little
+remnant of your authority shall have been sapped; until you are no
+more than a puppet in the hands of the Huguenot party, a roi
+faineant, a king of straw."
+
+"By God, madame, were you not my mother - "
+
+"It is because I am your mother that I seek to save you."
+
+He looked at her again, but again his glance faltered.  He paced the
+length of the room and back, mouthing and muttering.  Then he came
+to stand, leaning on the prie-dieu, facing her.
+
+"By God's Death, madame, since you demand to know what the Admiral
+said, you shall.  You prove to me that what he told me was no more
+than true.  He told me that a king is only recognized in France as
+long as he is a power for good or ill over his subjects; that this
+power, together with the management of all State affairs, is
+slipping, by the crafty contrivances of yourself and Anjou there,
+out of my hands into your own; that this power and authority which
+you are both stealing from me may one day be used against me and my
+kingdom.  And he bade me be on my guard against you both and take
+my measures.  He gave me this counsel, madame, because he deemed it
+his duty as one of my most loyal and faithful servants at the point
+of death, and - "
+
+"The shameless hypocrite!" her dull, contemptuous voice interrupted
+him.  "At the point of death!  Two broken fingers and a flesh-wound
+in the arm and he represents himself as in articulo mortis that he
+may play upon you, and make you believe his lies."
+
+Her stolidity of manner and her logic, ponderous and irresistible,
+had their effect.  His big, green eyes seemed to dilate, his mouth
+fell open.
+
+"If - " he began, and checked, rapped out an oath, and checked again.
+"Are they lies, madame?" he asked slowly.
+
+She caught the straining note of hope in that question of his - a
+hope founded upon vanity, the vanity to be king in fact, as well
+as king in name.  She rose.
+
+"To ask me that - me, your mother - is to insult me.  Come, Anjou."
+
+And on that she departed, craftily, leaving her suggestion to prey
+upon his mind.
+
+But once alone in her oratory with Anjou, her habitual torpor was
+sloughed away.  For once she quivered and crimsoned and raised her
+voice, whilst for once her sleepy eyes kindled and flashed as she
+inveighed against Coligny and the Huguenots.
+
+For the moment, however, there was no more to be done.  The stroke
+had failed; Coligny had survived the attempt upon his life, and
+there was danger that on the recoil the blow might smite those who
+had launched it.  But on the morrow, which was Saturday, things
+suddenly assumed a very different complexion.
+
+That great Catholic leader, the powerful, handsome Duke of Guise,
+who, more than suspected of having inspired the attempted
+assassination, had kept his hotel since yesterday, now sought the
+Queen-Mother with news of what was happening in the city.  Armed
+bands of Huguenot nobles were riding through the streets, clamouring:
+
+"Death to the assassins of the Admiral!  Down with the Guisards!"
+
+And, although a regiment of Gardes Francaises had been hastily
+brought to Paris to keep order, the Duke feared grave trouble in
+a city which the royal wedding had filled with Huguenot gentlemen
+and their following.  Then, too, there were rumours that the
+Huguenots were arming everywhere - rumours which, whether true or
+not, were, under the circumstances, sufficiently natural and
+probable to be taken seriously.
+
+Leaving Guise in her oratory, and summoning her darling Anjou,
+Catherine at once sought the King.  She may have believed the
+rumours, and she may even have stated them as facts beyond dispute
+so as to strengthen and establish her case against Gaspard de
+Coligny.
+
+"King Gaspard I," she told him, "is already taking his measures.
+The Huguenots are arming; officers have been dispatched into the
+provinces to levy troops.  The Admiral has ordered the raising of
+ten thousand horse in Germany, and another ten thousand Swiss
+mercenaries in the Cantons."
+
+He stared at her vacuously.  Some such rumour had already reached
+him, and he conceived that here was definite confirmation of it.
+
+"You may determine now who are your friends, who your loyal servants,"
+she told him.  "How is so much force to be resisted in the state in
+which you find yourself?  The Catholics exhausted, and weary as they
+are by a civil war in which their king was of little account to them,
+are going to arm so as to offer what resistance they can without
+depending upon you.  Thus, within your State you will have two great
+parties under arms, neither of which can be called your own.  Unless
+you stir yourself, and quickly, unless you choose now between friends
+and foes, you will find yourself alone, isolated, in grave peril,
+without authority or power."
+
+He sank overwhelmed to a chair, and took his head in his hands,
+cogitating.  When next he looked at her there was positive fear in
+his great eyes, a fear evoked by contemplation of the picture which
+her words had painted for him.
+
+He looked from her to Anjou.
+
+"What then?" he asked.  "What then?  How is the danger to be averted?"
+
+"By a simple stroke of the sword," she answered calmly.  "Slice off
+at a blow the head of this beast of rebellion, this hydra of heresy."
+
+He huddled back, horror in his eyes.  His hands slid slowly along
+the carved arms of his chair, and clenched the ends so tightly that
+his knuckles looked like knobs of marble.
+
+"Kill the Admiral?" he said slowly.
+
+"The Admiral and the chief Huguenot leaders," she said, much in the
+tone she might have used, were it a matter of wringing the necks of
+a dozen capons.
+
+"Ah, ca!  Par la Mort Dieu!"  He heaved himself up, raging.  "Thus
+would your hatred of him be served.  Thus would you - "
+
+Coolly she sliced into his foaming speech.
+
+"Not I - not I!" she said.  "Do nothing upon my advice.  Summon your
+Council.  Send for Tavannes, Biragues, Retz, and the others.  Consult
+with them.  They are your friends; you trust and believe in them.
+When they know the facts, see if their counsel will differ from your
+mother's.  Send for them; they are in the Louvre now."
+
+He looked at her a moment.
+
+"Very well," he said; and reeled to the door, bawling hoarsely his
+orders.
+
+They came, one by one - the Marshal de Tavannes, the Duke of Retz,
+the Duke of Nevers, the Chancellor de Biragues, and lastly the Duke
+of Guise, upon whom the King scowled a jealous hatred that was now
+fully alive.
+
+The window, which overlooked the quay and the river, stood open to
+admit what air might be stirring on that hot day of August.
+
+Charles sat at his writing-table, sullen and moody, twining a string
+of beads about his fingers.  Catherine occupied the chair over
+beyond the table, Anjou sitting near her on a stool.  The others
+stood respectfully awaiting that the King should make known his
+wishes.  The shifty royal glance swept over them from under lowering
+brows; then it rested almost in challenge upon his mother.
+
+"Tell them," he bade her curtly.
+
+She told them what already she had told her son, relating all now
+with greater detail and circumstance.  For some moments nothing was
+heard in that room but the steady drone of her unemotional voice.
+When she had finished, she yawned and settled herself to hear what
+might be answered.
+
+"Well," snapped the King, "you have heard.  What do you advise?
+Speak out!"
+
+Nevers was the first to answer.
+
+"There is no other way," he said stiffly, "but that which Her Majesty
+advises.  The danger is grave.  If it is to be averted, action must
+be prompt and effective."
+
+Tavannes clasped his hands behind him and said much the same, as
+did presently the Chancellor.
+
+Twisting and untwisting his chaplet of beads about his long fingers,
+his eyes averted, the King heard each in turn.  Then he looked up.
+His glance, deliberately ignoring Guise, settled upon the Duke of
+Retz, who held aloof.
+
+"And you, Monsieur le Marechal, what is your counsel?"
+
+Retz drew himself up, as if bracing himself to meet opposing forces.
+He was a little pale, but quite composed.
+
+"If there is a man whom I should hate," he said, "it is this Gaspard
+de Coligny, who has defamed me and all my family by the foul
+accusations he has put abroad.  But I will not," he added firmly,
+"take vengeance upon my enemies at the expense of my king and master.
+I cannot counsel a course so disastrous to Your Majesty and the
+whole kingdom.  Did we act as we have been advised, Sire, can you
+doubt that we should be taxed - and rightly taxed in view of the
+treaty that has been signed - with perfidy and disloyalty?"
+
+Dead silence followed that bombshell of opposition, coming from a
+quarter whence it was least expected.  For Catherine and Anjou had
+confidently counted upon the Duke's hatred of Coligny to ensure his
+support of their designs.
+
+A little colour crept into the pale cheeks of the King.  His glance
+kindled out of its sullenness.  He was as one who sees sudden hope
+amid despair.
+
+"That is the truth," he said.  "Messieurs, and you, madame my mother,
+you have heard the truth.  How do you like it?"
+
+"Monsieur de Retz is deceived by an excess of loyalty," said Anjou
+quickly.  "Because he bears a personal enmity to the Admiral, he
+conceives that it would hurt his honour to speak otherwise.  It must
+savour to him, as he has said, of using his king and master to avenge
+his own personal wrongs.  We can respect Monsieur de Retz's view,
+although we hold it mistaken."
+
+"Will Monsieur de Retz tell us what other course lies open?" quoth
+the bluff Tavannes.
+
+"Some other course must be found," cried the King, rousing himself.
+"It must be found, do you hear?  I will not have you touch the life
+of my friend the Admiral.  I will not have it - by the Blood!"
+
+A hubbub followed, all speaking at once, until the King banged the
+table, and reminded them that his cabinet was not a fish-market.
+
+"I say that there is no other way," Catherine insisted.  "There
+cannot be two kings in France, nor can there be two parties.  For
+your own safety's sake, and for the safety of your kingdom, I
+beseech you so to contrive that in France there be but one party
+with one head - yourself."
+
+"Two kings in France?" he said.  "What two kings?"
+
+"Yourself and Gaspard I - King Coligny, the King of the Huguenots."
+
+"He is my subject - my faithful, loyal subject," the King protested,
+but with less assurance.
+
+"A subject who raises forces of his own, levies taxes of his own,
+garrisons Huguenot cities," said Biragues.  "That is a very
+dangerous type of subject, Sire."
+
+"A subject who forces you into war with Protestant Flanders against
+Catholic Spain," added the blunt Tavannes.
+
+"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.
+
+The remainder of the day and a portion of the evening were spent in
+concerting ways and means.  They assured themselves of the Provost
+of the merchants of Paris, of the officers of the Gardes Francaises
+and the three thousand Swiss, of the Captains of the quarters
+and other notoriously factious persons who could be trusted as
+leaders.  By ten o'clock at night all preparations were made and it
+was agreed that the ringing of the bell of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois
+for matins was to be the signal for the massacre.
+
+A gentleman of the Admiral's household taking his way homeward that
+night passed several men bearing sheaves of pikes upon their
+shoulders, and never suspected whom these weapons were to arm.  He
+met several small companies of soldiers marching quietly, their
+weapons shouldered, their matches glowing, and still he suspected
+nothing, whilst in one quarter he stopped to watch a man whose
+behaviour seemed curious, and discovered that he was chalking a
+white cross upon the doors of certain houses.
+
+Meeting soon afterwards another man with a bundle of weapons on his
+shoulder, the intrigued Huguenot gentleman asked him bluntly what
+he carried and whither he went.
+
+"It is for the divertissement at the Louvre tonight," he was answered.
+
+But in the Louvre the Queen-Mother and the Catholic leaders, the
+labours of preparation ended, were snatching a brief rest.  Between
+two and three o'clock in the morning Catherine and Anjou repaired
+again to the King's cabinet.  They found him waiting there, his face
+haggard and his eyes fevered.
+
+He had spent a part of the evening at billiards, and among the
+players had been La Rochefoucauld, of whom he was fond, and who had
+left him with a jest at eleven o'clock, little dreaming that it was
+for the last time.
+
+The three of them crossed to the window overlooking the river.  They
+opened it, and peered out fearfully.  Even Catherine trembled now
+that the hour approached.  The air was fresh and cool, swept clean
+by the stirring breeze of the dawn, whose first ghostly gleams were
+already in the sky.  Suddenly, somewhere near at hand, a pistol
+cracked.  The noise affected them oddly.  The King fell into an ague
+and his teeth chattered audibly.  Panic seized him.
+
+"By the Blood, it shall not be!  It shall not be!" he cried suddenly.
+
+He looked at his mother and his brother and they looked at him;
+ghastly were the faces of all three, their eyes wide and staring
+with horror.
+
+Charles swore in his terror that he would cancel all commands.  And
+since Catherine and Anjou made no attempt to hinder him, he
+summoned an officer and bade him seek out the Duke of Guise at once
+and command him to stay his hand.
+
+The messenger eventually found the Duke in the courtyard of the
+Admiral's house, standing over the Admiral's dead body, which his
+assassins had flung down from the bedroom window.  Guise laughed,
+and stirred the head of the corpse with his foot, answering that
+the message came too late.  Even as he spoke the great bell of
+Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois began to ring for matins.
+
+The royal party huddled at that window of the Louvre heard it at
+the same moment, and heard, as if in immediate answer, shots of
+arquebus and pistol, cries and screams near at hand, and then,
+gradually swelling from a murmur, the baying of the fierce multitude.
+Other bells gave tongue, until from every steeple in Paris the alarm
+rang out.  The red glow from thousands of torches flushed the heavens
+with a rosy tint as of dawn, the air grew heavy with the smell of
+pitch and resin.
+
+The King, clutching the sill of the window, poured out a stream of
+blasphemy from between his chattering teeth.  Then the hubbub rose
+suddenly near at hand.  The neighbourhood of the Louvre was
+populous with Huguenots, and into it now poured the excited Catholic
+citizens and soldiers.  Soon the quay beneath the palace windows
+presented the fiercest spectacle of any quarter, of Paris.
+
+Half-clad men, women, and children fled screaming before the
+assassins, until they were checked by the chains that everywhere
+had been placed across the streets.  Some sought the river, hoping
+to find a way of escape.  But with Satanic foresight, the boats
+usually moored there had been conveyed to the other side.  Thus
+some hundreds of Huguenots were brought to bay, and done to death
+under the very eyes of the King who had unleashed this horror.
+Doors were crashed open, flames rose to heaven, men and women were
+shot down under the palace wall, bodies were flung from windows,
+and on every side - in the words of D'Aubigne - the blood now
+flowed, seeking the river.
+
+The King watched a while, screams and curses pouring from his lips
+to be lost in the horrible uproar.  He turned, perhaps to upbraid
+his mother and his brother, but found that they were no longer at
+his side.  Behind him in the room a page was crouching, watching
+him with a white, horrified face.
+
+Suddenly the King laughed - it was the fierce, hysterical laugh of
+a madman.  His eyes fell on the arquebuses flanking the picture of
+the Mother of Mercy.  He took one of them down, then caught the boy
+by the collar of his doublet and dragged him forward to the window.
+
+"Hither, and load for me!" he bade him, between peals of his
+terrible laughter.  Then he levelled the weapon across the sill of
+the window.  "Parpaillots!  Parpaillots!" he screamed.  "Kill!
+Kill!" and he discharged the arquebus into a fleeing group of
+Huguenots.
+
+Five days later, the King - who by now had thrown the blame of the
+whole affair, with its slaughter of some two thousand Huguenots,
+upon the Guises and their hatred of Coligny - rode out to Montfaucon
+to behold the decapitated body of the Admiral, which hung from the
+gallows in chains.  A courtier of a poor but obtrusive wit leaned
+towards him.
+
+"The Admiral becomes noisome, I think," he said.
+
+The King's green eyes considered him, his lips curling grimly.
+
+"The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet," he said.
+
+
+
+
+VI.   THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT
+
+LOUIS XIV AND MADAME DE MONTESPAN
+
+
+If you scrape the rubbish-heap of servile, coeval flattery that
+usually smothers the personality of a monarch, you will discover a
+few kings who have been truly great; many who have achieved
+greatness because they were wisely content to serve as masks for
+the great intellects of their time; and, for the rest, some bad
+kings, some foolish kings, and some ridiculous kings.  But in all
+that royal gallery of history you will hardly find a more truly
+absurd figure than that of the resplendent Roi Soleil, the Grand
+Monarque, the Fourteenth Louis of France.
+
+I am not aware that he has ever been laughed at; certainly never
+to the extent which he deserves.  The flatterers of his day,
+inevitable products of his reign, did their work so thoroughly that
+even in secret they do not appear to have dared to utter - possibly
+they did not even dare to think - the truth about him.  Their work
+survives, and when you have assessed the monstrous flattery at its
+true worth, swept it aside and come down to the real facts of his
+life, you make the discovery that the proudest title their
+sycophancy could bestow and his own fatuity accept - Le Roi Soleil,
+the Sun-King - makes him what indeed he is: a king of opera bouffe.
+There is about him at times something almost reminiscent of the
+Court buffoons of a century before, who puffed themselves out with
+mock pride, and aped a sort of sovereignty to excite laughter; with
+this difference, however, that in his own case it was not intended
+to be amusing.
+
+A heartless voluptuary of mediocre intelligence, he contrived to
+wrap himself in what Saint-Simon has called a "terrible majesty."
+Hewas obsessed by the idea of the dignity, almost the divinity - of
+kingship.  I cannot believe that he conceived himself human.  He
+appears to have held that being king was very like being God, and
+he duped the world by ceremonials of etiquette that were very
+nearly sacramental.  We find him burdening the most simple and
+personal acts of everyday life with a succession of rites of an
+amazing complexity.  Thus, when he rose in the morning, princes of
+the blood and the first gentlemen of France were in attendance: one
+to present to him his stockings, another to proffer on bended knee
+the royal garters, a third to perform the ceremony of handing him
+his wig, and so on until the toilette of his plump, not unhandsome
+person was complete.  You miss the incense, you feel that some
+noble thurifer should have fumigated him at each stage.  Perhaps
+he never thought of it.
+
+The evil fruits of his reign - evil, that is to say, from the point
+of view of his order, which was swept away as so much anachronistic
+rubbish - did not come until a hundred years later.  In his own day
+France was great, and this not because but in spite of him.  After
+all, he was not the absolute ruler he conceived himself.  There were
+such capable men as Colbert and Louvois at the King's side'; there
+was the great genius of France which manifests itself when and as
+it will, whatever the regime - and there was Madame de Montespan
+to whose influence not a little of Louis's glory may be ascribed,
+since the most splendid years of his reign were those between 1668
+and 1678 when she was maitresse en titre and more than Queen of
+France.  The women played a great part at the Court of Louis XIV,
+and those upon whom he turned his dark eyes were in the main as wax
+under the solar rays of the Sun-King.  But Madame de Montespan had
+discovered the secret of reversing matters, so that in her hands it
+was the King who became as wax for her modelling.  It is with this
+secret - a page of the secret history of France that we are here
+concerned.
+
+Francoises Athenais de Tonnay-Charente had come to Court in 1660 as
+a maid of honour to the Queen.  Of a wit and grace to match her
+superb beauty, she was also of a perfervid piety, a daily
+communicant, a model of virtue to all maids of honour.  This until
+the Devil tempted her.  When that happened, she did not merely eat
+an apple; she devoured an entire orchard.  Pride and ambition
+brought about her downfall.  She shared the universal jealousy of
+which Louise de la Valliere was a victim, and coveted the honours
+and the splendour by which that unfortunate favourite was surrounded.
+
+Not even her marriage with the Marquis de Montespan some three years
+after her coming to Court sufficed to overcome the longings born of
+her covetousness and ambition.  And then, when the Sun-King looked
+with favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object
+of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near
+to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour.  This
+preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with
+Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the Sun-King
+proposed to do him.
+
+In putting it thus, I but make myself the mouthpiece of the Court.
+
+When Montespan began to make trouble by railing furiously against
+the friendship of the King for his wife, his behaviour so amazed the
+King's cousin, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, that she called him
+"an extravagant and extraordinary man."  To his face she told him
+that he must be mad to behave in this fashion; and so incredibly
+distorted were his views, that he did not at all agree with her.
+He provoked scenes with the King, in which he quoted Scripture,
+made opposite allusions to King David which were in the very worst
+taste, and even ventured to suggest that the Sun-King might have
+to reckon with the judgment of God.  If he escaped a lettre de
+cachet and a dungeon in the Bastille, it can only have been because
+the King feared the further spread of a scandal injurious to the
+sacrosanctity of his royal dignity.
+
+The Marchioness fumed in private and sneered in public.  When
+Mademoiselle de Montpensier suggested that for his safety's sake
+she should control her husband's antics, she expressed her
+bitterness.
+
+"He and my parrot," she said, "amuse the Court to my shame."
+
+In the end, finding that neither by upbraiding the King nor by
+beating his wife could he prevail, Monsieur de Montespan resigned
+himself after his own fashion.  He went into widower's mourning,
+dressed his servants in black, and came ostentatiously to Court in
+a mourning coach to take ceremonious leave of his friends.  It was
+an affair that profoundly irritated the Sun-King, and very nearly
+made him ridiculous.
+
+Thereafter Montespan abandoned his wife to the King.  He withdrew
+first to his country seat, and, later, from France, having
+received more than a hint that Louis was intending to settle his
+score with him.  By that time Madame de Montespan was firmly
+established as maitresse en titre, and in January of 1669 she gave
+birth to the Duke of Maine, the first of the seven children she
+was to bear the King.  Parliament was to legitimize them all,
+declaring them royal children of France, and the country was to
+provide titles, dignities, and royal rent-rolls for them and their
+heirs forever.  Do you wonder that there was a revolution a century
+later, and that the people, grown weary of the parasitic anachronism
+of royalty, should have risen to throw off the intolerable burden
+it imposed upon them?
+
+The splendour of Madame de Montespan in those days was something
+the like of which had never been seen at the Court of France.  On
+her estate of Clagny, near Versailles, stood now a magnificent
+chateau.  Louis had begun by building a country villa, which
+satisfied her not at all.
+
+"That," she told him, "might do very well for an opera-girl";
+whereupon the infatuated monarch had no alternative but to command
+its demolition, and call in the famous architect, Mansard, to erect
+in its place an ultraroyal residence.
+
+At Versailles itself, whilst the long-suffering Queen had to be
+content with ten rooms on the second floor, Madame de Montespan was
+installed in twice that number on the first; and whilst a simple
+page sufficed to carry the Queen's train at Court, nothing less than
+the wife of a marshal of France must perform the same office for the
+favourite.  She kept royal state as few queens have ever kept it.
+She was assigned a troop of royal bodyguards for escort, and when
+she travelled there was a never-ending train to follow her six-horse
+coach, and officers of State came to receive her with royal honours
+wherever she passed.
+
+In her immeasurable pride she became a tyrant, even over the King
+himself.
+
+"Thunderous and triumphant," Madame de Sevigne describes her in
+those days when the Sun-King was her utter and almost timid slave.
+
+But constancy is not a Jovian virtue.  Jupiter grew restless, and
+then, shaking off all restraint, plunged into inconstancy of the
+most scandalous and flagrant kind.  It is doubtful if the history
+of royal amours, with all its fecundity, can furnish a parallel.
+Within a few months, Madame de Soubise, Mademoiselle de
+Rochefort-Theobon, Madame de Louvigny, Madame de Ludres, and some
+lesser ones passed in rapid succession through the furnace of the
+Sun-King's affection - which is to say, through the royal bed -
+and at last the Court was amazed to see the Widow Scarron, who had
+been appointed governess to Madame de Montespan's royal children,
+empanoplied in a dignity and ceremony that left no doubt on the
+score of her true position at Court.
+
+And so, after seven years of absolute sway in which homage had been
+paid her almost in awe by noble and simple alike, Madame de
+Montespan, neglected now by Louis, moved amid reflections of that
+neglect, with arrogantly smiling lips and desperate rage in her
+heart.  She sneered openly at the royal lack of taste, allowed her
+barbed wit to make offensive sport with the ladies who supplanted
+her; yet, ravaged by jealousy, she feared for herself the fate
+which through her had overtaken La Valliere.
+
+That fear was with her now as she sat in the window embrasure, hell
+in her heart and a reflection of it in her eyes, as, fallen almost
+to the rank of a spectator in that comedy wherein she was accustomed
+to the leading part, she watched the shifting, chattering,
+glittering crowd.  And as she watched, her line of vision was
+crossed to her undoing by the slender, wellknit figure of de Vanens,
+who, dressed from head to foot in black, detached sharply from that
+dazzling throng.  His face was pale and saturnine, his eyes dark,
+very level, and singularly piercing.  Thus his appearance served to
+underline the peculiar fascination which he exerted, the rather
+sinister appeal which he made to the imagination.
+
+This young Provencal nobleman was known to dabble in magic, and
+there were one or two dark passages in his past life of which more
+than a whisper had gone abroad.  Of being a student of alchemy, a
+"philosopher" - that is to say, a seeker after the philosopher's
+stone, which was to effect the transmutation of metals - he made
+no secret.  But if you taxed him with demoniacal practices he would
+deny it, yet in a way that carried no conviction.
+
+To this dangerous fellow Madame de Montespan now made appeal in her
+desperate need.
+
+Their eyes met as he was sauntering past, and with a lazy smile and
+a languid wave of her fan she beckoned him to her side.
+
+"They tell me, Vanens," said she, "that your philosophy succeeds
+so well that you are transmuting copper into silver."
+
+His piercing eyes surveyed her, narrowing; a smile flickered over
+his thin lips.
+
+"They tell you the truth," he said.  "I have cast a bar which has
+been purchased as good silver by the Mint."
+
+Her interest quickened.  "By the Mint!" she echoed, amazed.  "But,
+then, my friend - "  She was breathless with excitement.  "It is
+a miracle."
+
+"No less," he admitted.  "But there is the greater miracle to come
+ - the transmutation of base metal into gold."
+
+"And you will perform it?"
+
+"Let me but conquer the secret of solidifying mercury, and the rest
+is naught.  I shall conquer it, and soon."
+
+He spoke with easy confidence, a man stating something that he knew
+beyond the possibility of doubt.  The Marquise became thoughtful.
+She sighed.
+
+"You are the master of deep secrets, Vanens.  Have you none that
+will soften flinty hearts, make them responsive?"
+
+He considered this woman whom Saint-Simon has called "beautiful as
+the day," and his smile broadened.
+
+"Look in your mirror for the alchemy needed there," he bade her.
+
+Anger rippled across the perfect face.  She lowered
+
+"I have looked - in vain.  Can you not help me, Vanens, you who
+know so much?"
+
+"A love-philtre?" said he, and hummed.  "Are you in earnest?"
+
+"Do you mock me with that question? Is not my need proclaimed for
+all to see?"
+
+Vanens became grave.
+
+"It is not an alchemy in which myself I dabble," he said slowly.
+"But I am acquainted with those who do."
+
+She clutched his wrist in her eagerness.
+
+"I will pay well," she said.
+
+"You will need to.  Such things are costly."  He glanced round to
+see that none was listening, then bending nearer: "There is a
+sorceress named La Voisin in the Rue de la Tannerie, well known as
+a fortuneteller to many ladies of the Court, who at a word from me
+will do your need."
+
+La Montespan turned white.  The piety in which she had been reared
+ - the habits of which clung to her despite the irregularity of her
+life-made her recoil before the thing that she desired.  Sorcery
+was of the Devil.  She told him so.  But Vanens laughed.
+
+"So that it be effective .  .  ." said he with a shrug.
+
+And then across the room floated a woman's trilling laugh.  She
+looked in the direction of the sound and beheld the gorgeous figure
+of the King bending - yet haughty and condescending even in
+adoration - over handsome Madame de Ludres.  Pride and ambition
+rose up in sudden fury to trample on religious feeling.  Let Vanens
+take her to this witch of his, for be the aid what it might, she
+must have it.
+
+And so, one dark night late in the year, Louis de Vanens handed a
+masked and muffled lady from a coach at the corner of the Rue de
+la Tannerie, and conducted her to the house of La Voisin.
+
+The door was opened for them by a young woman of some twenty years
+of age - Marguerite Monvoisin, the daughter of the witch - who led
+them upstairs to a room that was handsomely furnished and hung with
+fantastic tapestry of red designs upon a black ground - designs that
+took monstrous shapes in the flickering light of a cluster of
+candles.  Black curtains parted, and from between them stepped a
+short, plump woman, of a certain comeliness, with two round black
+beads of eyes.  She was fantastically robed in a cloak of crimson
+velvet, lined with costly furs and closely studded with double-headed
+eagles in fine gold, which must have been worth a prince's ransom;
+and she wore red shoes on each of which there was the same eagle
+design in gold.
+
+"Ah, Vanens!" she said familiarly.
+
+He bowed.
+
+"I bring you," he announced, "a lady who has need of your skill."
+
+And he waved a hand towards the tall cloaked figure at his side.
+
+La Voisin looked at the masked face.
+
+"Velvet faces tell me little, Madame la Marquise," she said calmly.
+"Nor, believe me, will the King look at a countenance that you
+conceal from me."
+
+Therewas an exclamation of surprise and anger from Madame de
+Montespan.  She plucked off her mask.
+
+"You knew me?"
+
+"Can you wonder?" asked La Voisin, "since I have told you what you
+carry concealed in your heart?"
+
+Madame de Montespan was as credulous as only the very devout can be.
+
+"Since that is so, since you know already what I seek, tell me can
+you procure it me?" she asked in a fever of excitement.  "I will
+pay well."
+
+La Voisin smiled darkly.
+
+"Obdurate, indeed, is the case that will not yield to such medicine
+as mine," she said.  "Let me consider first what must be done.  In
+a few days I shall bring you word.  But have you courage for a great
+ordeal?"
+
+"For any ordeal that will give me what I want."
+
+"In a few days, then, you shall hear from me," said the witch, and
+so dismissed the great lady.
+
+Leaving a heavy purse behind her, as Vanens had instructed her, the
+Marchioness departed with her escort.  And there, with that
+initiation, as far as we can ascertain, ended Louis de Vanens's
+connection with the affair.
+
+At Clagny Madame de Montespan waited for three days in a fever of
+impatience for the coming of the witch.  But when at last La Voisin
+presented herself, the proposal that she had to make was one before
+which the Marchioness recoiled in horror and some indignation.
+
+The magic that La Voisin suggested involved a coadjutor, the Abbe
+Guibourg, and the black mass to be celebrated by him.  Madame de
+Montespan had heard something of these dread sacrificial rites to
+Satan; sufficient to fill her with loathing and disgust of the
+whitefaced, beady-eyed woman who dared to insult her by the
+proposal.  She fumed and raged a while, and even went near to
+striking La Voisin, who looked on with inscrutable face and stony,
+almost contemptuous, indifference.  Before that impenetrable,
+almost uncanny, calm, Madame de Montespan's fury at last abated.
+Then the urgency of her need becoming paramount, she desired more
+clearly to be told what would be expected of her.  What the witch
+told her was more appalling than anything she could have imagined.
+But La Voisin argued:
+
+"Can anything be accomplished without cost?  Can anything be gained
+in this life without payment of some kind?"
+
+"But the price of this is monstrous!" Madame de Montespan protested.
+
+"Measure it by the worldly advantages to be gained.  They are not
+small, madame.  To enjoy boundless wealth, boundless power, and
+boundless honour, to be more than queen - is not all this worth
+some sacrifice?"
+
+To Madame de Montespan it must have been worth any sacrifice in this
+world or the next, since in the end she conquered her disgust, and
+agreed to lend herself to this horror.
+
+Three masses, she was told, would be necessary to ensure success,
+and it was determined that they should be celebrated in the chapel
+of the Chateau de Villebousin, where Guibourg had been almoner, to
+which he had access, and which was at the time untenanted.
+
+The chateau was a gloomy mediaeval fortress, blackened by age, and
+standing, surrounded by a moat, in a lonely spot some two miles to
+the south of Paris.  Thither on a dark, gusty night of March came
+Madame de Montespan, accompanied by her confidential waiting-woman,
+Mademoiselle Desceillets.  They left the coach to await them on the
+Orleans road, and thence, escorted by a single male attendant, they
+made their way by a rutted, sodden path towards the grim castle
+looming faintly through the enveloping gloom.
+
+The wind howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row
+of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil
+place, bent groaning before its fury.  From the running waters of
+the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that was
+indescribably wicked.
+
+Desocillets was frightened by the dark, the desolate loneliness and
+eeriness of the place; but she dared utter no complaint as she
+stumbled forward over the uneven ground, through the gloom and the
+buffeting wind, compelled by the suasion of her mistress's imperious
+will.  Thus, by a drawbridge spanning dark, oily waters, they came
+into a vast courtyard and an atmosphere as of mildew.  A studded
+door stood ajar, and through the gap, from a guiding beacon of
+infamy, fell a rhomb of yellow light, suddenly obscured by a squat
+female figure when the steps of the Marchioness and her companions
+fell upon the stones of the yard.
+
+It was La Voisin who stood on the threshold to receive her client.
+In the stone-flagged hall behind her the light of a lantern revealed
+her daughter, Marguerite Monvoisin, and a short, crafty-faced,
+misshapen fellow in black homespun and a red wig - a magician named
+Lesage, one of La Voisin's coadjutors, a rogue of some talent who
+exploited the witches of Paris to his own profit.
+
+Leaving Leroy - the Marchioness's male attendant below in this
+fellow's company, La Voisin took up a candle and lighted Madame de
+Montespan up the broad stone staircase, draughty and cold, to the
+ante-room of the chapel on the floor above.  Mademoiselle
+Desceillets followed closely and fearfully, and Marguerite Monvoisin
+came last.
+
+They entered the ante-room, a spacious chamber, bare of furniture
+save for an oaken table in the middle, some faded and mildewed
+tapestries, and a cane-backed settle of twisted walnut over against
+the wall.  An alabaster lamp on the table made an island of light
+in that place of gloom, and within the circle of its feeble rays
+stood a gross old man of some seventy years of age in sacerdotal
+garments of unusual design: the white alb worn over a greasy cassock
+was studded with black fir-cones; the stole and maniple were of
+black satin, with fir-cones wrought in yellow thread.
+
+His inflamed countenance was of a revolting hideousness: his cheeks
+were covered by a network of blue veins, his eyes squinted horribly,
+his lips vanished inwards over toothless gums, and a fringe of white
+hair hung in matted wisps from his high, bald crown.  This was the
+infamous Abbe Guibourg, sacristan of Saint Denis, an ordained
+priest who had consecrated himself to the service of the Devil.
+
+He received the great lady with a low bow which, despite herself,
+she acknowledged by a shudder.  She was very pale, and her eyes
+were dilating and preternaturally bright.  Fear began to possess
+her, yet she suffered herself to be ushered into the chapel, which
+was dimly illumined by a couple of candles standing beside a basin
+on a table.  The altar light had been extinguished.  Her maid would
+have hung back, but that she feared to be parted from her mistress.
+She passed in with her in the wake of Guibourg, and followed by La
+Voisin, who closed the door, leaving her daughter in the ante-room.
+
+Although she had never been a participant in any of the sorceries
+practised by her mother, yet Marguerite was fully aware of their
+extent, and more than guessed what horrors were taking place beyond
+the closed doors of the chapel.  The very thought of them filled
+her with loathing and disgust as she sat waiting, huddled in a
+corner of the settle.  And yet when presently through the closed
+doors came the drone of the voice of that unclean celebrant, to
+blend with the whine of the wind in the chimney, Marguerite, urged
+by a morbid curiosity she could not conquer, crept shuddering to
+the door, which directly faced the altar, and going down on her
+knees applied her eye to the keyhole.
+
+What she saw may very well have appalled her considering the exalted
+station of Madame de Montespan.  She beheld the white, sculptural
+form of the royal favourite lying at full length supine upon the
+altar, her arms outstretched, holding a lighted candle in each hand.
+Immediately before her stood the Abbe Guibourg, his body screening
+the chalice and its position from the eye of the watching girl.
+
+She heard the whine of his voice pattering the Latin of the mass,
+which he was reciting backwards from the last gospel; and
+occasionally she heard responses muttered by her mother, who with
+Mademoiselle Desceillets was beyond Marguerite's narrow range of
+vision.
+
+Apart from the interest lent to the proceedings by the presence of
+the royal favourite the affair must have seemed now very stupid and
+pointless to Marguerite, although she would certainly not have found
+it so had she known enough Latin to understand the horrible
+perversion of the Credo.  But when the Offertory was reached,
+matters suddenly quickened.  In stealing away from the door, she
+was no more than in time to avoid being caught spying by her mother,
+who now issued from the chapel.
+
+La Voisin crossed the ante-room briskly and went out.
+
+Within a very few minutes she was back again, her approach now
+heralded by the feeble, quavering squeals of a very young child.
+
+Marguerite Monvoisin was sufficiently acquainted with the ghastly
+rites to guess what was impending.  She was young, and herself a
+mother.  She had her share of the maternal instinct alive in every
+female animal - with the occasional exception of the human pervert
+ - and the hoarse, plaintive cries of that young child chilled her
+to the soul with horror.  She felt the skin roughening and
+tightening upon her body, and a sense of physical sickness overcame
+her.  That and the fear of her mother kept her stiff and frozen in
+an angle of the settle until La Voisin had passed through and
+reentered the chapel bearing that piteous bundle in her arms.
+
+Then, when the door had closed again, the girl, horrified and
+fascinated, sped back to watch.  She saw that unclean priest turn
+and receive the child from La Voisin.  As it changed hands its
+cries were stilled.
+
+Guibourg faced the altar once more, that little wisp of humanity
+that was but a few days old held now aloft, naked, in his criminal
+hands.  His muttering, slobbering voice pronouncing the words of
+that demoniac consecration reached the ears of the petrified girl
+at the keyhole.
+
+Ashtaroth, Asmodeus, Princes of Affection, I conjure you to
+acknowledge the sacrifice I offer to you of this child for the
+things I ask of you, which are that the King's love for me shall
+be continued, and that honoured by princes and princesses nothing
+shall be denied me of all that I may ask."
+
+A sudden gust of wind smote and rattled the windows of the chapel
+and the ante-room, as if the legions of hell had flung themselves
+against the walls of the chateau.  There was a rush and clatter in
+the chimney of the ante-room's vast, empty fireplace, and through
+the din Marguerite, as her failing limbs sank under her and she
+slithered down in a heap against the chapel door, seemed to hear a
+burst of exultantly cruel satanic laughter.  With chattering teeth
+and burning eyes she sat huddled, listening in terror.  The child
+began to cry again, more violently, more piteously; then, quite
+suddenly, there was a little choking cough, a gurgle, the chink of
+metal against earthenware, and silence.
+
+When some moments later the squat figure of La Voisin emerged from
+the chapel, Marguerite was back in the shadows, hunched on the
+settle to which she had crawled.  She saw that her mother now
+carried a basin under her arm, and she did not need the evidence
+of her eyes to inform her of the dreadful contents that the witch
+was bearing away in it.
+
+Meanwhile in the chapel the ineffably blasphemous rites proceeded.
+To the warm human blood which had been caught in the consecrated
+chalice, Guibourg had added, among other foulnesses, powdered
+cantharides, the dust of desiccated moles, and the blood of bats.
+By the addition of flour he had wrought the ingredients into an
+ineffable paste, and over this, through the door, which La Voisin
+had left ajar, Marguerite heard his voice pronouncing the dread
+words of Transubstantiation.
+
+Marguerite's horror mounted until it threatened to suffocate her.
+It was as if some hellish miasma, released by Guibourg's monstrous
+incantations, crept through to permeate and poison the air she
+breathed.
+
+It would be a half-hour later when Madame de Montespan at last came
+out.  She was of a ghastly pallor, her limbs shook and trembled
+under her as she stepped forth, and there was a wild horror in her
+staring eyes.  Yet she contrived to carry herself almost defiantly
+erect, and she spoke sharply to the half-swooning Desceillets, who
+staggered after her.
+
+She took her departure from that unholy place bearing with her the
+host compounded of devilish ingredients which when dried and reduced
+to powder was to be administered to the King to ensure the renewal
+of his failing affection for her.
+
+The Marchioness contrived that a creature of her own, an officer of
+the buttery in her pay, should introduce it into the royal soup.
+The immediate and not unnatural result was that the King was taken
+violently ill, and Madame de Montespan's anxiety and suspense were
+increased thereby.  On his recovery, however, it would seem that
+the demoniac sacrament - thrice repeated by then - had not been in
+vain.
+
+The sequel, indeed, appeared to justify Madame de Montespan's faith
+in sorcery, and to compensate her for all the horror to which in
+her despair she had submitted.  Madame de Ludres found herself coldly
+regarded by the convalescent King.  Very soon she was discarded, the
+Widow Scarron neglected, and the fickle monarch was once more at the
+feet of the lovely marchioness, her utter and devoted slave.
+
+Thus was Madame de Montespan "thunderously triumphant" once more,
+and established as firmly as 'ever in the Sun-King's favour.  Madame
+de Sevigne, in speaking of this phase of their relations, dilates
+upon the completeness of the reconciliation, and tells us that the
+ardour of the first years seemed now to have returned.  And for two
+whole years it continued thus.  Never before had Madame de
+Montespan's sway been more absolute, no shadow came to trouble, the
+serenity of her rule.
+
+But it proved, after all, to be no more than the last flare of an
+expiring fire that was definitely quenched at last, in 1679, by
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges.  A maid of honour to madame, she was a
+child of not more than eighteen years, fair and flaxen, with pink
+cheeks and large, childish eyes; and it was for this doll that the
+regal Montespan now found herself discarded.
+
+Honours rained upon the new favourite.  Louis made her a duchess
+with an income of twenty thousand livres, and deeply though this
+may have disgusted his subjects, it disgusted Madame de Montespan
+still more.  Blinded by rage she openly abused the new duchess, and
+provoked a fairly public scene with Louis, in which she gave him
+her true opinion of him with a disturbing frankness.
+
+"You dishonour yourself," she informed him among other things.  "And
+you betray your taste when you make love to a pink-and-white doll,
+a little fool that has no more wit nor manners than if she were
+painted on canvas!"  Then, with an increase of scorn, she delivered
+herself of an unpardonable apostrophe: "You, a king, to accept the
+inheritance of that chit's rustic lovers! "
+
+He flushed and scowled upon her.
+
+"That is an infamous falsehood!" he exclaimed.  "Madame, you are
+unbearable!"  He was very angry, and it infuriated him the more that
+she should stand so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow
+the proudest heads in France.  "You have the pride of Satan, your
+greed is insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable,
+and you have the most false and poisonous tongue in the world!"
+
+Her brutal answer bludgeoned that high divinity to earth.
+
+"With all my imperfections," she sneered, "at least I do not smell
+as badly as you do!"
+
+It was an answer that extinguished her last chance.  It was fatal
+to the dignity, to the "terrible majesty" of Louis.  It stripped
+him of all divinity, and revealed him authoritatively as intensely
+and even unpleasantly human.  It was beyond hope of pardon.
+
+His face turned the colour of wax.  A glacial silence hung over the
+agonized witnesses of that royal humiliation.  Then, without a word,
+in a vain attempt to rescue the dignity she had so cruelly mauled,
+he turned, his red heels clicked rapidly and unsteadily across the
+polished floor, and he was gone.
+
+When Madame de Montespan realized exactly what she had done, nothing
+but rage remained to her - rage and its offspring, vindictiveness.
+The Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis
+escape punishment for his faithlessness.  La Voisin should afford
+her the means to accomplish this.  And so she goes once more to the
+Rue de la Tannerie.
+
+Now, the matter of Madame de Montespan's present needs was one in
+which the witches were particularIy expert.  Were you troubled with
+a rival, did your husband persist in surviving your affection for him,
+did those from whom you had expectations cling obstinately and
+inconsiderately to life, the witches by incantations and the use of
+powders - in which arsenic was the dominant charm - could usually
+put the matter right for you.  Indeed, so wide and general was the
+practice of poisoning become, that the authorities, lately aroused
+to the fact by the sensational revelations of the Marchioness de
+Brinvilliers, had set up in this year 1670 the tribunal known as
+the Chambre Ardente to inquire into the matter, and to conduct
+prosecutions.
+
+La Voisin promised help to the Marchioness.  She called in another
+witch of horrible repute, named La Filastre, her coadjutor Lesage,
+and two expert poisoners, Romani and Bertrand, who devised an
+ingenious plot for the murder of the Duchess of Fontanges.  They
+were to visit her, Romani as a cloth merchant, and Bertrand as his
+servant, to offer her their wares, including some Grenoble gloves,
+which were the most beautiful gloves in the world and unfailingly
+irresistible to ladies.  These gloves they prepared in accordance
+with certain magical recipes in such a way that the Duchess, after
+wearing them, must die a lingering death in which there could be no
+suspicion of poisoning.
+
+The King was to be dealt with by means of a petition steeped in
+similar powders, and should receive his death by taking it into his
+hands.  La Voisin herself was to go to Saint-Germain to present
+this petition on Monday, March 13th, one of those days on which,
+according to ancient custom, all comers were admitted to the royal
+presence.
+
+Thus they disposed.  But Fate was already silently stalking La
+Voisin.
+
+It is to the fact that an obscure and vulgar woman had drunk one
+glass of wine too many three months earlier that the King owed his
+escape.
+
+If you are interested in the almost grotesque disparity that can
+lie between cause and effect, here is a subject for you.  Three
+months earlier a tailor named Vigoureux, whose wife secretly
+practised magic, had entertained a few friends to dinner, amongst
+whom was an intimate of his wife's, named Marie Bosse.  This Marie
+Bosse it was who drank that excessive glass of wine which, drowning
+prudence, led her to boast of the famous trade she drove as a
+fortune-teller to the nobility, and even to hint of something
+further.
+
+"Another three poisonings," she chuckled, "and I shall retire with
+my fortune made!"
+
+An attorney who was present pricked up his ears, bethought him of
+the tales that were afloat, and gave information to the police.
+The police set a trap for Marie Bosse, and she betrayed herself.
+Later, under torture, she betrayed La Vigoureux.  La Vigoureux
+betrayed others, and these others again.
+
+The arrest of Marie Bosse was like knocking down the first of a row
+of ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these
+stood in the royal apartments.
+
+On the day before she was to repair to Saint-Germain, La Voisin,
+betrayed in her turn, received a surprise visit from the police -
+who, of course, had no knowledge of the regicide their action was
+thwarting - and she was carried off to the Chatelet.  Put to the
+question, she revealed a great deal; but her terror of the horrible
+punishment reserved for regicides prevented her to the day of her
+death at the stake - in February of 1680 from saying a word of her
+association with Madame de Montespan.
+
+But there were others whom she betrayed under torture, and whose
+arrest followed quickly upon her own, who had not her strength of
+character.  Among these were La Filastre and the magician Lesage.
+When it was found that these two corroborated each other in the
+incredible things which they related, the Chambre Ardente took
+fright.  La Reynie, who presided over it, laid the matter before
+the King, and the King, horror-stricken by the discovery of the
+revolting practices in which the mother of his children had been
+engaged, suspended the sittings of the Chambre Ardente, and
+commanded that no further proceedings should be taken against Lesage
+and La Filastre, and none initiated against Romani, Bertrand, the
+Abbe Guibourg, and the scores of other poisoners and magicians who
+had been arrested, and who were acquainted with Madame de Montespan's
+unholy traffic.
+
+But it was not out of any desire to spare Madame de Montespan that
+the King proceeded in this manner; he was concerned only to spare
+himself and his royal dignity.  He feared above all things the
+scandal and ridicule which must touch him as a result of publicity,
+and because he feared it so much, he could impose no punishment
+upon Madame de Montespan.
+
+This he made known to her at the interview between them procured by
+his minister Louvois, at about the time that the sittings of the
+Chambre Ardente were suspended.
+
+To this interview that proud, domineering woman came in dread, and
+in tears and humility for once.  The King's bearing was cold and
+hard.  Cold and hard were the words in which he declared the extent
+of his knowledge of her infamy, words which revealed the loathing
+and disgust this knowledge brought him.  If at first she was
+terror-stricken, crushed under the indictment, yet she was never of
+a temper to bear reproaches long.  Under his scorn her anger kindled
+and her humility was sloughed.
+
+"What then?" she cried at last, eyes aflash through lingering tears.
+"Is the blame all mine?  If all this is true, it is no less true
+that I was driven to it by my love for you and the despair to which
+your heartlessness and infidelity reduced me.  To you," she
+continued, gathering force at every word, "I sacrificed everything
+ - my honour, a noble husband who loved me, all that a woman prizes.
+And what did you give me in exchange?  Your cruel fickleness exposed
+me to the low mockery of the lick-spittles of your Court.  Do you
+wonder that I went mad, and that in my madness I sacrificed what
+shreds of self-respect you had left me?  And now it seems I have
+lost all but life.  Take that, too, if it be your pleasure.  Heaven
+knows it has little value left for me!  But remember that in
+striking me you strike the mother of your children - the legitimate
+children of France.  Remember that!"
+
+He remembered it.  Indeed, he was never in danger of forgetting it;
+for she might have added that he would be striking also at himself
+and at that royal dignity which was his religion.  And so that all
+scandalous comment might be avoided she was actually allowed to
+remain at Court, although no longer in her first-floor apartments;
+and it was not until ten years later that she departed to withdraw
+to the community of Saint Joseph.
+
+But even in her disgrace this woman, secretly convicted among other
+abominations of attempting to procure the poisoning of the King and
+of her rival, enjoyed an annual pension of 1,200.000 livres; whilst
+none dared proceed against those who shared her guilt - not even
+the infamous Guibourg, the poisoners Romani and Bertrand, and La
+Filastre - nor yet against some scores of associates of these, who
+were known to live by sorcery and poisonings, and who might be
+privy to the part played by Madame de Montespan in that horrible
+night of magic at the Chateau de Villebousin.
+
+The hot blast of revolution was needed to sweep France clean.
+
+
+
+
+VI.   THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT
+
+LOUIS XIV AND MADAME DE MONTESPAN
+
+
+If you scrape the rubbish-heap of servile, coeval flattery that
+usually smothers the personality of a monarch, you will discover a
+few kings who have been truly great; many who have achieved
+greatness because they were wisely content to serve as masks for
+the great intellects of their time; and, for the rest, some bad
+kings, some foolish kings, and some ridiculous kings.  But in all
+that royal gallery of history you will hardly find a more truly
+absurd figure than that of the resplendent Roi Soleil, the Grand
+Monarque, the Fourteenth Louis of France.
+
+I am not aware that he has ever been laughed at; certainly never
+to the extent which he deserves.  The flatterers of his day,
+inevitable products of his reign, did their work so thoroughly that
+even in secret they do not appear to have dared to utter - possibly
+they did not even dare to think - the truth about him.  Their work
+survives, and when you have assessed the monstrous flattery at its
+true worth, swept it aside and come down to the real facts of his
+life, you make the discovery that the proudest title their
+sycophancy could bestow and his own fatuity accept - Le Roi Soleil,
+the Sun-King - makes him what indeed he is: a king of opera bouffe.
+There is about him at times something almost reminiscent of the
+Court buffoons of a century before, who puffed themselves out with
+mock pride, and aped a sort of sovereignty to excite laughter; with
+this difference, however, that in his own case it was not intended
+to be amusing.
+
+A heartless voluptuary of mediocre intelligence, he contrived to
+wrap himself in what Saint-Simon has called a "terrible majesty."
+He was obsessed by the idea of the dignity, almost the divinity - of
+kingship.  I cannot believe that he conceived himself human.  He
+appears to have held that being king was very like being God, and
+he duped the world by ceremonials of etiquette that were very
+nearly sacramental.  We find him burdening the most simple and
+personal acts of everyday life with a succession of rites of an
+amazing complexity.  Thus, when he rose in the morning, princes of
+the blood and the first gentlemen of France were in attendance: one
+to present to him his stockings, another to proffer on bended knee
+the royal garters, a third to perform the ceremony of handing him
+his wig, and so on until the toilette of his plump, not unhandsome
+person was complete.  You miss the incense, you feel that some
+noble thurifer should have fumigated him at each stage.  Perhaps
+he never thought of it.
+
+The evil fruits of his reign - evil, that is to say, from the point
+of view of his order, which was swept away as so much anachronistic
+rubbish - did not come until a hundred years later.  In his own day
+France was great, and this not because but in spite of him.  After
+all, he was not the absolute ruler he conceived himself.  There were
+such capable men as Colbert and Louvois at the King's side'; there
+was the great genius of France which manifests itself when and as
+it will, whatever the regime - and there was Madame de Montespan
+to whose influence not a little of Louis's glory may be ascribed,
+since the most splendid years of his reign were those between 1668
+and 1678 when she was maitresse en titre and more than Queen of
+France.  The women played a great part at the Court of Louis XIV,
+and those upon whom he turned his dark eyes were in the main as wax
+under the solar rays of the Sun-King.  But Madame de Montespan had
+discovered the secret of reversing matters, so that in her hands it
+was the King who became as wax for her modelling.  It is with this
+secret - a page of the secret history of France that we are here
+concerned.
+
+Francoises Athenais de Tonnay-Charente had come to Court in 1660 as
+a maid of honour to the Queen.  Of a wit and grace to match her
+superb beauty, she was also of a perfervid piety, a daily
+communicant, a model of virtue to all maids of honour.  This until
+the Devil tempted her.  When that happened, she did not merely eat
+an apple; she devoured an entire orchard.  Pride and ambition
+brought about her downfall.  She shared the universal jealousy of
+which Louise de la Valliere was a victim, and coveted the honours
+and the splendour by which that unfortunate favourite was surrounded.
+
+Not even her marriage with the Marquis de Montespan some three years
+after her coming to Court sufficed to overcome the longings born of
+her covetousness and ambition.  And then, when the Sun-King looked
+with favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object
+of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near
+to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour.  This
+preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with
+Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the Sun-King
+proposed to do him.
+
+In putting it thus, I but make myself the mouthpiece of the Court.
+
+When Montespan began to make trouble by railing furiously against
+the friendship of the King for his wife, his behaviour so amazed the
+King's cousin, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, that she called him
+"an extravagant and extraordinary man."  To his face she told him
+that he must be mad to behave in this fashion; and so incredibly
+distorted were his views, that he did not at all agree with her.
+He provoked scenes with the King, in which he quoted Scripture,
+made opposite allusions to King David which were in the very worst
+taste, and even ventured to suggest that the Sun-King might have
+to reckon with the judgment of God.  If he escaped a lettre de
+cachet and a dungeon in the Bastille, it can only have been because
+the King feared the further spread of a scandal injurious to the
+sacrosanctity of his royal dignity.
+
+The Marchioness fumed in private and sneered in public.  When
+Mademoiselle de Montpensier suggested that for his safety's sake
+she should control her husband's antics, she expressed her
+bitterness.
+
+"He and my parrot," she said, "amuse the Court to my shame."
+
+In the end, finding that neither by upbraiding the King nor by
+beating his wife could he prevail, Monsieur de Montespan resigned
+himself after his own fashion.  He went into widower's mourning,
+dressed his servants in black, and came ostentatiously to Court in
+a mourning coach to take ceremonious leave of his friends.  It was
+an affair that profoundly irritated the Sun-King, and very nearly
+made him ridiculous.
+
+Thereafter Montespan abandoned his wife to the King.  He withdrew
+first to his country seat, and, later, from France, having
+received more than a hint that Louis was intending to settle his
+score with him.  By that time Madame de Montespan was firmly
+established as maitresse en titre, and in January of 1669 she gave
+birth to the Duke of Maine, the first of the seven children she
+was to bear the King.  Parliament was to legitimize them all,
+declaring them royal children of France, and the country was to
+provide titles, dignities, and royal rent-rolls for them and their
+heirs forever.  Do you wonder that there was a revolution a century
+later, and that the people, grown weary of the parasitic anachronism
+of royalty, should have risen to throw off the intolerable burden
+it imposed upon them?
+
+The splendour of Madame de Montespan in those days was something
+the like of which had never been seen at the Court of France.  On
+her estate of Clagny, near Versailles, stood now a magnificent
+chateau.  Louis had begun by building a country villa, which
+satisfied her not at all.
+
+"That," she told him, "might do very well for an opera-girl";
+whereupon the infatuated monarch had no alternative but to command
+its demolition, and call in the famous architect, Mansard, to erect
+in its place an ultra royal residence.
+
+At Versailles itself, whilst the long-suffering Queen had to be
+content with ten rooms on the second floor, Madame de Montespan was
+installed in twice that number on the first; and whilst a simple
+page sufficed to carry the Queen's train at Court, nothing less than
+the wife of a marshal of France must perform the same office for the
+favourite.  She kept royal state as few queens have ever kept it.
+She was assigned a troop of royal bodyguards for escort, and when
+she travelled there was a never-ending train to follow her six-horse
+coach, and officers of State came to receive her with royal honours
+wherever she passed.
+
+In her immeasurable pride she became a tyrant, even over the King
+himself.
+
+"Thunderous and triumphant," Madame de Sevigne describes her in
+those days when the Sun-King was her utter and almost timid slave.
+
+But constancy is not a Jovian virtue.  Jupiter grew restless, and
+then, shaking off all restraint, plunged into inconstancy of the
+most scandalous and flagrant kind.  It is doubtful if the history
+of royal amours, with all its fecundity, can furnish a parallel.
+Within a few months, Madame de Soubise, Mademoiselle de
+Rochefort-Theobon, Madame de Louvigny, Madame de Ludres, and some
+lesser ones passed in rapid succession through the furnace of the
+Sun-King's affection - which is to say, through the royal bed -
+and at last the Court was amazed to see the Widow Scarron, who had
+been appointed governess to Madame de Montespan's royal children,
+empanoplied in a dignity and ceremony that left no doubt on the
+score of her true position at Court.
+
+And so, after seven years of absolute sway in which homage had been
+paid her almost in awe by noble and simple alike, Madame de
+Montespan, neglected now by Louis, moved amid reflections of that
+neglect, with arrogantly smiling lips and desperate rage in her
+heart.  She sneered openly at the royal lack of taste, allowed her
+barbed wit to make offensive sport with the ladies who supplanted
+her; yet, ravaged by jealousy, she feared for herself the fate
+which through her had overtaken La Valliere.
+
+That fear was with her now as she sat in the window embrasure, hell
+in her heart and a reflection of it in her eyes, as, fallen almost
+to the rank of a spectator in that comedy wherein she was accustomed
+to the leading part, she watched the shifting, chattering,
+glittering crowd.  And as she watched, her line of vision was
+crossed to her undoing by the slender, well-knit figure of de Vanens,
+who, dressed from head to foot in black, detached sharply from that
+dazzling throng.  His face was pale and saturnine, his eyes dark,
+very level, and singularly piercing.  Thus his appearance served to
+underline the peculiar fascination which he exerted, the rather
+sinister appeal which he made to the imagination.
+
+This young Provencal nobleman was known to dabble in magic, and
+there were one or two dark passages in his past life of which more
+than a whisper had gone abroad.  Of being a student of alchemy, a
+"philosopher" - that is to say, a seeker after the philosopher's
+stone, which was to effect the transmutation of metals - he made
+no secret.  But if you taxed him with demoniacal practices he would
+deny it, yet in a way that carried no conviction.
+
+To this dangerous fellow Madame de Montespan now made appeal in her
+desperate need.
+
+Their eyes met as he was sauntering past, and with a lazy smile and
+a languid wave of her fan she beckoned him to her side.
+
+"They tell me, Vanens," said she, "that your philosophy succeeds
+so well that you are transmuting copper into silver."
+
+His piercing eyes surveyed her, narrowing; a smile flickered over
+his thin lips.
+
+"They tell you the truth," he said.  "I have cast a bar which has
+been purchased as good silver by the Mint."
+
+Her interest quickened.  "By the Mint!" she echoed, amazed.  "But,
+then, my friend - "  She was breathless with excitement.  "It is
+a miracle."
+
+"No less," he admitted.  "But there is the greater miracle to come
+ - the transmutation of base metal into gold."
+
+"And you will perform it?"
+
+"Let me but conquer the secret of solidifying mercury, and the rest
+is naught.  I shall conquer it, and soon."
+
+He spoke with easy confidence, a man stating something that he knew
+beyond the possibility of doubt.  The Marquise became thoughtful.
+She sighed.
+
+"You are the master of deep secrets, Vanens.  Have you none that
+will soften flinty hearts, make them responsive?"
+
+He considered this woman whom Saint-Simon has called "beautiful as
+the day," and his smile broadened.
+
+"Look in your mirror for the alchemy needed there," he bade her.
+
+Anger rippled across the perfect face.  She lowered
+
+"I have looked - in vain.  Can you not help me, Vanens, you who
+know so much?"
+
+"A love-philtre?" said he, and hummed.  "Are you in earnest?"
+
+"Do you mock me with that question? Is not my need proclaimed for
+all to see?"
+
+Vanens became grave.
+
+"It is not an alchemy in which myself I dabble," he said slowly.
+"But I am acquainted with those who do."
+
+She clutched his wrist in her eagerness.
+
+"I will pay well," she said.
+
+"You will need to.  Such things are costly."  He glanced round to
+see that none was listening, then bending nearer: "There is a
+sorceress named La Voisin in the Rue de la Tannerie, well known as
+a fortuneteller to many ladies of the Court, who at a word from me
+will do your need."
+
+La Montespan turned white.  The piety in which she had been reared
+ - the habits of which clung to her despite the irregularity of her
+life-made her recoil before the thing that she desired.  Sorcery
+was of the Devil.  She told him so.  But Vanens laughed.
+
+"So that it be effective .  .  ." said he with a shrug.
+
+And then across the room floated a woman's trilling laugh.  She
+looked in the direction of the sound and beheld the gorgeous figure
+of the King bending - yet haughty and condescending even in
+adoration - over handsome Madame de Ludres.  Pride and ambition
+rose up in sudden fury to trample on religious feeling.  Let Vanens
+take her to this witch of his, for be the aid what it might, she
+must have it.
+
+And so, one dark night late in the year, Louis de Vanens handed a
+masked and muffled lady from a coach at the corner of the Rue de
+la Tannerie, and conducted her to the house of La Voisin.
+
+The door was opened for them by a young woman of some twenty years
+of age - Marguerite Monvoisin, the daughter of the witch - who led
+them upstairs to a room that was handsomely furnished and hung with
+fantastic tapestry of red designs upon a black ground - designs that
+took monstrous shapes in the flickering light of a cluster of
+candles.  Black curtains parted, and from between them stepped a
+short, plump woman, of a certain comeliness, with two round black
+beads of eyes.  She was fantastically robed in a cloak of crimson
+velvet, lined with costly furs and closely studded with double-headed
+eagles in fine gold, which must have been worth a prince's ransom;
+and she wore red shoes on each of which there was the same eagle
+design in gold.
+
+"Ah, Vanens!" she said familiarly.
+
+He bowed.
+
+"I bring you," he announced, "a lady who has need of your skill."
+
+And he waved a hand towards the tall cloaked figure at his side.
+
+La Voisin looked at the masked face.
+
+"Velvet faces tell me little, Madame la Marquise," she said calmly.
+"Nor, believe me, will the King look at a countenance that you
+conceal from me."
+
+There was an exclamation of surprise and anger from Madame de
+Montespan.  She plucked off her mask.
+
+"You knew me?"
+
+"Can you wonder?" asked La Voisin, "since I have told you what you
+carry concealed in your heart?"
+
+Madame de Montespan was as credulous as only the very devout can be.
+
+"Since that is so, since you know already what I seek, tell me can
+you procure it me?" she asked in a fever of excitement.  "I will
+pay well."
+
+La Voisin smiled darkly.
+
+"Obdurate, indeed, is the case that will not yield to such medicine
+as mine," she said.  "Let me consider first what must be done.  In
+a few days I shall bring you word.  But have you courage for a great
+ordeal?"
+
+"For any ordeal that will give me what I want."
+
+"In a few days, then, you shall hear from me," said the witch, and
+so dismissed the great lady.
+
+Leaving a heavy purse behind her, as Vanens had instructed her, the
+Marchioness departed with her escort.  And there, with that
+initiation, as far as we can ascertain, ended Louis de Vanens's
+connection with the affair.
+
+At Clagny Madame de Montespan waited for three days in a fever of
+impatience for the coming of the witch.  But when at last La Voisin
+presented herself, the proposal that she had to make was one before
+which the Marchioness recoiled in horror and some indignation.
+
+The magic that La Voisin suggested involved a coadjutor, the Abbe
+Guibourg, and the black mass to be celebrated by him.  Madame de
+Montespan had heard something of these dread sacrificial rites to
+Satan; sufficient to fill her with loathing and disgust of the
+white-faced, beady-eyed woman who dared to insult her by the
+proposal.  She fumed and raged a while, and even went near to
+striking La Voisin, who looked on with inscrutable face and stony,
+almost contemptuous, indifference.  Before that impenetrable,
+almost uncanny, calm, Madame de Montespan's fury at last abated.
+Then the urgency of her need becoming paramount, she desired more
+clearly to be told what would be expected of her.  What the witch
+told her was more appalling than anything she could have imagined.
+But La Voisin argued:
+
+"Can anything be accomplished without cost?  Can anything be gained
+in this life without payment of some kind?"
+
+"But the price of this is monstrous!" Madame de Montespan protested.
+
+"Measure it by the worldly advantages to be gained.  They are not
+small, madame.  To enjoy boundless wealth, boundless power, and
+boundless honour, to be more than queen - is not all this worth
+some sacrifice?"
+
+To Madame de Montespan it must have been worth any sacrifice in this
+world or the next, since in the end she conquered her disgust, and
+agreed to lend herself to this horror.
+
+Three masses, she was told, would be necessary to ensure success,
+and it was determined that they should be celebrated in the chapel
+of the Chateau de Villebousin, where Guibourg had been almoner, to
+which he had access, and which was at the time untenanted.
+
+The chateau was a gloomy mediaeval fortress, blackened by age, and
+standing, surrounded by a moat, in a lonely spot some two miles to
+the south of Paris.  Thither on a dark, gusty night of March came
+Madame de Montespan, accompanied by her confidential waiting-woman,
+Mademoiselle Desoeillets.  They left the coach to await them on the
+Orleans road, and thence, escorted by a single male attendant, they
+made their way by a rutted, sodden path towards the grim castle
+looming faintly through the enveloping gloom.
+
+The wind howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row
+of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil
+place, bent groaning before its fury.  From the running waters of
+the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that was
+indescribably wicked.
+
+Desoeillets was frightened by the dark, the desolate loneliness and
+eeriness of the place; but she dared utter no complaint as she
+stumbled forward over the uneven ground, through the gloom and the
+buffeting wind, compelled by the suasion of her mistress's imperious
+will.  Thus, by a drawbridge spanning dark, oily waters, they came
+into a vast courtyard and an atmosphere as of mildew.  A studded
+door stood ajar, and through the gap, from a guiding beacon of
+infamy, fell a rhomb of yellow light, suddenly obscured by a squat
+female figure when the steps of the Marchioness and her companions
+fell upon the stones of the yard.
+
+It was La Voisin who stood on the threshold to receive her client.
+In the stone-flagged hall behind her the light of a lantern revealed
+her daughter, Marguerite Monvoisin, and a short, crafty-faced,
+misshapen fellow in black homespun and a red wig - a magician named
+Lesage, one of La Voisin's coadjutors, a rogue of some talent who
+exploited the witches of Paris to his own profit.
+
+Leaving Leroy - the Marchioness's male attendant below in this
+fellow's company, La Voisin took up a candle and lighted Madame de
+Montespan up the broad stone staircase, draughty and cold, to the
+ante-room of the chapel on the floor above.  Mademoiselle
+Desoeillets followed closely and fearfully, and Marguerite Monvoisin
+came last.
+
+They entered the ante-room, a spacious chamber, bare of furniture
+save for an oaken table in the middle, some faded and mildewed
+tapestries, and a cane-backed settle of twisted walnut over against
+the wall.  An alabaster lamp on the table made an island of light
+in that place of gloom, and within the circle of its feeble rays
+stood a gross old man of some seventy years of age in sacerdotal
+garments of unusual design: the white alb worn over a greasy cassock
+was studded with black fir-cones; the stole and maniple were of
+black satin, with fir-cones wrought in yellow thread.
+
+His inflamed countenance was of a revolting hideousness: his cheeks
+were covered by a network of blue veins, his eyes squinted horribly,
+his lips vanished inwards over toothless gums, and a fringe of white
+hair hung in matted wisps from his high, bald crown.  This was the
+infamous Abbe Guibourg, sacristan of Saint Denis, an ordained
+priest who had consecrated himself to the service of the Devil.
+
+He received the great lady with a low bow which, despite herself,
+she acknowledged by a shudder.  She was very pale, and her eyes
+were dilating and preternaturally bright.  Fear began to possess
+her, yet she suffered herself to be ushered into the chapel, which
+was dimly illumined by a couple of candles standing beside a basin
+on a table.  The altar light had been extinguished.  Her maid would
+have hung back, but that she feared to be parted from her mistress.
+She passed in with her in the wake of Guibourg, and followed by La
+Voisin, who closed the door, leaving her daughter in the ante-room.
+
+Although she had never been a participant in any of the sorceries
+practised by her mother, yet Marguerite was fully aware of their
+extent, and more than guessed what horrors were taking place beyond
+the closed doors of the chapel.  The very thought of them filled
+her with loathing and disgust as she sat waiting, huddled in a
+corner of the settle.  And yet when presently through the closed
+doors came the drone of the voice of that unclean celebrant, to
+blend with the whine of the wind in the chimney, Marguerite, urged
+by a morbid curiosity she could not conquer, crept shuddering to
+the door, which directly faced the altar, and going down on her
+knees applied her eye to the keyhole.
+
+What she saw may very well have appalled her considering the exalted
+station of Madame de Montespan.  She beheld the white, sculptural
+form of the royal favourite lying at full length supine upon the
+altar, her arms outstretched, holding a lighted candle in each hand.
+Immediately before her stood the Abbe Guibourg, his body screening
+the chalice and its position from the eye of the watching girl.
+
+She heard the whine of his voice pattering the Latin of the mass,
+which he was reciting backwards from the last gospel; and
+occasionally she heard responses muttered by her mother, who with
+Mademoiselle Desoeillets was beyond Marguerite's narrow range of
+vision.
+
+Apart from the interest lent to the proceedings by the presence of
+the royal favourite the affair must have seemed now very stupid and
+pointless to Marguerite, although she would certainly not have found
+it so had she known enough Latin to understand the horrible
+perversion of the Credo.  But when the Offertory was reached,
+matters suddenly quickened.  In stealing away from the door, she
+was no more than in time to avoid being caught spying by her mother,
+who now issued from the chapel.
+
+La Voisin crossed the ante-room briskly and went out.
+
+Within a very few minutes she was back again, her approach now
+heralded by the feeble, quavering squeals of a very young child.
+
+Marguerite Monvoisin was sufficiently acquainted with the ghastly
+rites to guess what was impending.  She was young, and herself a
+mother.  She had her share of the maternal instinct alive in every
+female animal - with the occasional exception of the human pervert
+ - and the hoarse, plaintive cries of that young child chilled her
+to the soul with horror.  She felt the skin roughening and
+tightening upon her body, and a sense of physical sickness overcame
+her.  That and the fear of her mother kept her stiff and frozen in
+an angle of the settle until La Voisin had passed through and
+reentered the chapel bearing that piteous bundle in her arms.
+
+Then, when the door had closed again, the girl, horrified and
+fascinated, sped back to watch.  She saw that unclean priest turn
+and receive the child from La Voisin.  As it changed hands its
+cries were stilled.
+
+Guibourg faced the altar once more, that little wisp of humanity
+that was but a few days old held now aloft, naked, in his criminal
+hands.  His muttering, slobbering voice pronouncing the words of
+that demoniac consecration reached the ears of the petrified girl
+at the keyhole.
+
+Ashtaroth, Asmodeus, Princes of Affection, I conjure you to
+acknowledge the sacrifice I offer to you of this child for the
+things I ask of you, which are that the King's love for me shall
+be continued, and that honoured by princes and princesses nothing
+shall be denied me of all that I may ask."
+
+A sudden gust of wind smote and rattled the windows of the chapel
+and the ante-room, as if the legions of hell had flung themselves
+against the walls of the chateau.  There was a rush and clatter in
+the chimney of the ante-room's vast, empty fireplace, and through
+the din Marguerite, as her failing limbs sank under her and she
+slithered down in a heap against the chapel door, seemed to hear a
+burst of exultantly cruel satanic laughter.  With chattering teeth
+and burning eyes she sat huddled, listening in terror.  The child
+began to cry again, more violently, more piteously; then, quite
+suddenly, there was a little choking cough, a gurgle, the chink of
+metal against earthenware, and silence.
+
+When some moments later the squat figure of La Voisin emerged from
+the chapel, Marguerite was back in the shadows, hunched on the
+settle to which she had crawled.  She saw that her mother now
+carried a basin under her arm, and she did not need the evidence
+of her eyes to inform her of the dreadful contents that the witch
+was bearing away in it.
+
+Meanwhile in the chapel the ineffably blasphemous rites proceeded.
+To the warm human blood which had been caught in the consecrated
+chalice, Guibourg had added, among other foulnesses, powdered
+cantharides, the dust of desiccated moles, and the blood of bats.
+By the addition of flour he had wrought the ingredients into an
+ineffable paste, and over this, through the door, which La Voisin
+had left ajar, Marguerite heard his voice pronouncing the dread
+words of Transubstantiation.
+
+Marguerite's horror mounted until it threatened to suffocate her.
+It was as if some hellish miasma, released by Guibourg's monstrous
+incantations, crept through to permeate and poison the air she
+breathed.
+
+It would be a half-hour later when Madame de Montespan at last came
+out.  She was of a ghastly pallor, her limbs shook and trembled
+under her as she stepped forth, and there was a wild horror in her
+staring eyes.  Yet she contrived to carry herself almost defiantly
+erect, and she spoke sharply to the half-swooning Desoeillets, who
+staggered after her.
+
+She took her departure from that unholy place bearing with her the
+host compounded of devilish ingredients which when dried and reduced
+to powder was to be administered to the King to ensure the renewal
+of his failing affection for her.
+
+The Marchioness contrived that a creature of her own, an officer of
+the buttery in her pay, should introduce it into the royal soup.
+The immediate and not unnatural result was that the King was taken
+violently ill, and Madame de Montespan's anxiety and suspense were
+increased thereby.  On his recovery, however, it would seem that
+the demoniac sacrament - thrice repeated by then - had not been in
+vain.
+
+The sequel, indeed, appeared to justify Madame de Montespan's faith
+in sorcery, and to compensate her for all the horror to which in
+her despair she had submitted.  Madame de Ludres found herself coldly
+regarded by the convalescent King.  Very soon she was discarded, the
+Widow Scarron neglected, and the fickle monarch was once more at the
+feet of the lovely marchioness, her utter and devoted slave.
+
+Thus was Madame de Montespan "thunderously triumphant" once more,
+and established as firmly as 'ever in the Sun-King's favour.  Madame
+de Sevigne, in speaking of this phase of their relations, dilates
+upon the completeness of the reconciliation, and tells us that the
+ardour of the first years seemed now to have returned.  And for two
+whole years it continued thus.  Never before had Madame de
+Montespan's sway been more absolute, no shadow came to trouble, the
+serenity of her rule.
+
+But it proved, after all, to be no more than the last flare of an
+expiring fire that was definitely quenched at last, in 1679, by
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges.  A maid of honour to madame, she was a
+child of not more than eighteen years, fair and flaxen, with pink
+cheeks and large, childish eyes; and it was for this doll that the
+regal Montespan now found herself discarded.
+
+Honours rained upon the new favourite.  Louis made her a duchess
+with an income of twenty thousand livres, and deeply though this
+may have disgusted his subjects, it disgusted Madame de Montespan
+still more.  Blinded by rage she openly abused the new duchess, and
+provoked a fairly public scene with Louis, in which she gave him
+her true opinion of him with a disturbing frankness.
+
+"You dishonour yourself," she informed him among other things.  "And
+you betray your taste when you make love to a pink-and-white doll,
+a little fool that has no more wit nor manners than if she were
+painted on canvas!"  Then, with an increase of scorn, she delivered
+herself of an unpardonable apostrophe: "You, a king, to accept the
+inheritance of that chit's rustic lovers! "
+
+He flushed and scowled upon her.
+
+"That is an infamous falsehood!" he exclaimed.  "Madame, you are
+unbearable!"  He was very angry, and it infuriated him the more that
+she should stand so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow
+the proudest heads in France.  "You have the pride of Satan, your
+greed is insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable,
+and you have the most false and poisonous tongue in the world!"
+
+Her brutal answer bludgeoned that high divinity to earth.
+
+"With all my imperfections," she sneered, "at least I do not smell
+as badly as you do!"
+
+It was an answer that extinguished her last chance.  It was fatal
+to the dignity, to the "terrible majesty" of Louis.  It stripped
+him of all divinity, and revealed him authoritatively as intensely
+and even unpleasantly human.  It was beyond hope of pardon.
+
+His face turned the colour of wax.  A glacial silence hung over the
+agonized witnesses of that royal humiliation.  Then, without a word,
+in a vain attempt to rescue the dignity she had so cruelly mauled,
+he turned, his red heels clicked rapidly and unsteadily across the
+polished floor, and he was gone.
+
+When Madame de Montespan realized exactly what she had done, nothing
+but rage remained to her - rage and its offspring, vindictiveness.
+The Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis
+escape punishment for his faithlessness.  La Voisin should afford
+her the means to accomplish this.  And so she goes once more to the
+Rue de la Tannerie.
+
+Now, the matter of Madame de Montespan's present needs was one in
+which the witches were particularly expert.  Were you troubled with
+a rival, did your husband persist in surviving your affection for him,
+did those from whom you had expectations cling obstinately and
+inconsiderately to life, the witches by incantations and the use of
+powders - in which arsenic was the dominant charm - could usually
+put the matter right for you.  Indeed, so wide and general was the
+practice of poisoning become, that the authorities, lately aroused
+to the fact by the sensational revelations of the Marchioness de
+Brinvilliers, had set up in this year 1670 the tribunal known as
+the Chambre Ardente to inquire into the matter, and to conduct
+prosecutions.
+
+La Voisin promised help to the Marchioness.  She called in another
+witch of horrible repute, named La Filastre, her coadjutor Lesage,
+and two expert poisoners, Romani and Bertrand, who devised an
+ingenious plot for the murder of the Duchess of Fontanges.  They
+were to visit her, Romani as a cloth merchant, and Bertrand as his
+servant, to offer her their wares, including some Grenoble gloves,
+which were the most beautiful gloves in the world and unfailingly
+irresistible to ladies.  These gloves they prepared in accordance
+with certain magical recipes in such a way that the Duchess, after
+wearing them, must die a lingering death in which there could be no
+suspicion of poisoning.
+
+The King was to be dealt with by means of a petition steeped in
+similar powders, and should receive his death by taking it into his
+hands.  La Voisin herself was to go to Saint-Germain to present
+this petition on Monday, March 13th, one of those days on which,
+according to ancient custom, all comers were admitted to the royal
+presence.
+
+Thus they disposed.  But Fate was already silently stalking La
+Voisin.
+
+It is to the fact that an obscure and vulgar woman had drunk one
+glass of wine too many three months earlier that the King owed his
+escape.
+
+If you are interested in the almost grotesque disparity that can
+lie between cause and effect, here is a subject for you.  Three
+months earlier a tailor named Vigoureux, whose wife secretly
+practised magic, had entertained a few friends to dinner, amongst
+whom was an intimate of his wife's, named Marie Bosse.  This Marie
+Bosse it was who drank that excessive glass of wine which, drowning
+prudence, led her to boast of the famous trade she drove as a
+fortune-teller to the nobility, and even to hint of something
+further.
+
+"Another three poisonings," she chuckled, "and I shall retire with
+my fortune made!"
+
+An attorney who was present pricked up his ears, bethought him of
+the tales that were afloat, and gave information to the police.
+The police set a trap for Marie Bosse, and she betrayed herself.
+Later, under torture, she betrayed La Vigoureux.  La Vigoureux
+betrayed others, and these others again.
+
+The arrest of Marie Bosse was like knocking down the first of a row
+of ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these
+stood in the royal apartments.
+
+On the day before she was to repair to Saint-Germain, La Voisin,
+betrayed in her turn, received a surprise visit from the police -
+who, of course, had no knowledge of the regicide their action was
+thwarting - and she was carried off to the Chatelet.  Put to the
+question, she revealed a great deal; but her terror of the horrible
+punishment reserved for regicides prevented her to the day of her
+death at the stake - in February of 1680 from saying a word of her
+association with Madame de Montespan.
+
+But there were others whom she betrayed under torture, and whose
+arrest followed quickly upon her own, who had not her strength of
+character.  Among these were La Filastre and the magician Lesage.
+When it was found that these two corroborated each other in the
+incredible things which they related, the Chambre Ardente took
+fright.  La Reynie, who presided over it, laid the matter before
+the King, and the King, horror-stricken by the discovery of the
+revolting practices in which the mother of his children had been
+engaged, suspended the sittings of the Chambre Ardente, and
+commanded that no further proceedings should be taken against Lesage
+and La Filastre, and none initiated against Romani, Bertrand, the
+Abbe Guibourg, and the scores of other poisoners and magicians who
+had been arrested, and who were acquainted with Madame de Montespan's
+unholy traffic.
+
+But it was not out of any desire to spare Madame de Montespan that
+the King proceeded in this manner; he was concerned only to spare
+himself and his royal dignity.  He feared above all things the
+scandal and ridicule which must touch him as a result of publicity,
+and because he feared it so much, he could impose no punishment
+upon Madame de Montespan.
+
+This he made known to her at the interview between them procured by
+his minister Louvois, at about the time that the sittings of the
+Chambre Ardente were suspended.
+
+To this interview that proud, domineering woman came in dread, and
+in tears and humility for once.  The King's bearing was cold and
+hard.  Cold and hard were the words in which he declared the extent
+of his knowledge of her infamy, words which revealed the loathing
+and disgust this knowledge brought him.  If at first she was
+terror-stricken, crushed under the indictment, yet she was never of
+a temper to bear reproaches long.  Under his scorn her anger kindled
+and her humility was sloughed.
+
+"What then?" she cried at last, eyes aflash through lingering tears.
+"Is the blame all mine?  If all this is true, it is no less true
+that I was driven to it by my love for you and the despair to which
+your heartlessness and infidelity reduced me.  To you," she
+continued, gathering force at every word, "I sacrificed everything
+ - my honour, a noble husband who loved me, all that a woman prizes.
+And what did you give me in exchange?  Your cruel fickleness exposed
+me to the low mockery of the lick-spittles of your Court.  Do you
+wonder that I went mad, and that in my madness I sacrificed what
+shreds of self-respect you had left me?  And now it seems I have
+lost all but life.  Take that, too, if it be your pleasure.  Heaven
+knows it has little value left for me!  But remember that in
+striking me you strike the mother of your children - the legitimate
+children of France.  Remember that!"
+
+He remembered it.  Indeed, he was never in danger of forgetting it;
+for she might have added that he would be striking also at himself
+and at that royal dignity which was his religion.  And so that all
+scandalous comment might be avoided she was actually allowed to
+remain at Court, although no longer in her first-floor apartments;
+and it was not until ten years later that she departed to withdraw
+to the community of Saint Joseph.
+
+But even in her disgrace this woman, secretly convicted among other
+abominations of attempting to procure the poisoning of the King and
+of her rival, enjoyed an annual pension of 1,200,000 livres; whilst
+none dared proceed against those who shared her guilt - not even
+the infamous Guibourg, the poisoners Romani and Bertrand, and La
+Filastre - nor yet against some scores of associates of these, who
+were known to live by sorcery and poisonings, and who might be
+privy to the part played by Madame de Montespan in that horrible
+night of magic at the Chateau de Villebousin.
+
+The hot blast of revolution was needed to sweep France clean.
+
+
+
+
+VII.   THE NIGHT OF GEMS
+
+THE "AFFAIRS" OF THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE
+
+
+Under the stars of a tepid, scented night of August of 1784, Prince
+Louis de Rohan, Cardinal of Strasbourg, Grand Almoner of France,
+made his way with quickened pulses through the Park of Versailles
+to a momentous assignation in the Grove of Venus.
+
+This illustrious member of an illustrious House, that derived from
+both the royal lines of Valois and Bourbon, was a man in the prime
+of life, of a fine height, still retaining something of the willowy
+slenderness that had been his in youth, and of a gentle, almost
+womanly beauty of countenance.
+
+In a grey cloak and a round, grey hat with gold cords, followed
+closely by two shadowy attendant figures, he stepped briskly amain,
+eager to open those gates across the path of his ambition, locked
+against him hitherto by the very hands from which he now went to
+receive the key.
+
+He deserves your sympathy, this elegant Cardinal-Prince, who had been
+the victim of the malice and schemings of the relentless Austrian
+Empress since the days when he represented the King of France at the
+Court of Vienna.
+
+The state he had kept there had been more than royal and royal in
+the dazzling French manner, which was perturbing to a woman of
+Marie Therese's solid German notions.  His hunting-parties, his
+supper-parties, the fetes he gave upon every occasion, the worldly
+inventiveness, the sumptuousness and reckless extravagance that
+made each of these affairs seem like a supplement to "The Arabian
+Nights' Entertainments," the sybaritic luxury of his surroundings,
+the incredible prodigality of his expenditure, all served profoundly
+to scandalize and embitter the Empress.
+
+That a priest in gay, secular clothes should hunt the stag on
+horseback filled her with horror at his levity; that he should flirt
+discreetly with the noble ladies of Vienna made her despair of his
+morals; whilst his personal elegance and irresistible charm were
+proofs to her of a profligacy that perverted the Court over which
+she ruled.
+
+She laboured for the extinction of his pernicious brilliance, and
+intrigued for his recall.  She made no attempt to conceal her
+hostility, nor did she love him any the better because he met her
+frigid haughtiness with an ironical urbanity that seemed ever to
+put her in the wrong.  And then one day he permitted his wit to be
+bitingly imprudent.
+
+"Marie Therese," he wrote to D'Aiguillon, "holds in one hand a
+handkerchief to receive her tears for the misfortunes of oppressed
+Poland, and in the other a sword to continue its partition."
+
+To say that in this witticism lay one of the causes of the French
+Revolution may seem at first glance an outrageous overstatement.
+Yet it is certain that, but for that imprudent phrase, the need
+would never have arisen that sent Rohan across the Park of Versailles
+on that August night to an assignation that in the sequel was to
+place a terrible weapon in the hands of the Revolutionary party.
+
+D'Aiguillon had published the gibe.  It had reached the ears of
+Marie Antoinette, and from her it had travelled back to her mother
+in Vienna.  It aroused in the Empress a resentment and a bitterness
+that did not rest until the splendid Cardinal-Prince was recalled
+from his embassy.  It did not rest even then.  By the ridicule to
+which the gibe exposed her - and if you know Marie Therese at all,
+you can imagine what that meant - it provoked a hostility that was
+indefatigably to labour against him.
+
+The Cardinal was ambitious, he had confidence in his talents and in
+the driving force of his mighty family, and he looked to become
+another Richelieu or Mazarin, the first Minister of the Crown, the
+empurpled ruler of France, the guiding power behind the throne.  All
+this he looked confidently to achieve; all this he might have
+achieved but for the obstacle that Marie Therese's resentment flung
+across his path.  The Empress saw to it that, through the person of
+her daughter, her hatred should pursue him even into France.
+
+Obedient ever to the iron will of her mother, sharing her mother's
+resentment, Marie Antoinette exerted all her influence to thwart
+this Cardinal whom her mother had taught her to regard as a
+dangerous, unprincipled man.
+
+On his return from Vienna bearing letters from Marie Therese to
+Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Cardinal found himself coldly
+received by the dull King, and discouraged from remaining at Court,
+whilst the Queen refused to grant him so much as the audience
+necessary for the delivery of these letters, desiring him to forward
+them instead.
+
+The chagrined Cardinal had no illusions.  He beheld here the hand
+of Marie Therese controlling Marie Antoinette, and, through Marie
+Antoinette, the King himself.  Worse followed.  He who had dreamt
+himself another Richelieu could only with difficulty obtain the
+promised position of Grand Almoner of France, and this solely as a
+result of the powerful and insistent influence exerted by his family.
+
+He perceived that if he was to succeed at all he must begin by
+softening the rigorous attitude which the Queen maintained towards
+him.  To that end he addressed himself.  But three successive letters
+he wrote to the Queen remained unanswered.  Through other channels
+persistently he begged for an audience that he might come in person
+to express his regrets for the offending indiscretion.  But the Queen
+remained unmoved, ruled ever by the Austrian Empress, who through
+her daughter sought to guide the affairs of France.
+
+Rohan was reduced to despair, and then in an evil hour his path was
+crossed by Jeanne de la Motte de Valois, who enjoyed the reputation
+of secretly possessing the friendship of the Queen, exerting a sort
+of back-stair influence, and who lived on that reputation.
+
+As a drowning man clutches at a straw, so the Cardinal-Prince Louis
+de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, Landgrave of Alsace, Commander
+of the Order of the Holy Ghost, clutched at this faiseuse d'affaires
+to help him in his desperate need.
+
+Jeanne de la Motte de Valois - perhaps the most astounding
+adventuress that ever lived by her wits and her beauty - had begun
+life by begging her bread in the streets.  She laid claim to
+left-handed descent from the royal line of Valois, and, her claim
+supported by the Marchioness Boulainvilliers, who had befriended
+her, she had obtained from the Crown a small pension, and had
+married the unscrupulous Marc Antoine de la Motte, a young soldier
+in the Burgundy regiment of the Gendarmerie.
+
+Later, in the autumn of 1786, her protectress presented her to
+Cardinal de Rohan.  His Eminence, interested in the lady's
+extraordinary history, in her remarkable beauty, vivacity, and wit,
+received the De la Mottes at his sumptuous chateau at Saverne, near
+Strasbourg, heard her story in greater detail, promised his
+protection, and as an earnest of his kindly intentions obtained for
+her husband a captain's commission in the Dragoons.
+
+Thereafter you see the De la Mottes in Paris and at Versailles,
+hustled from lodging to lodging for failure to pay what they owe;
+and finally installed in a house in the Rue Neuve Saint-Gilles.
+There they kept a sort of state, spending lavishly, now the money
+borrowed from the Cardinal, or upon the Cardinal's security; now
+the proceeds of pawned goods that had been bought on credit, and of
+other swindles practised upon those who were impressed by the lady's
+name and lineage and the patronage of the great Cardinal which she
+enjoyed.
+
+To live on your wits is no easy matter.  It demands infinite address,
+coolness, daring, and resource qualities which Madame de la Motte
+possessed in the highest degree, so that, harassed and pressed by
+creditors, she yet contrived to evade their attacks and to present
+a calm and, therefore, confidence-inspiring front to the world.
+
+The truth of Madame de la Motte de Valois's reputation for influence
+at Court was never doubted.  There was nothing in the character of
+Marie Antoinette to occasion such doubts.  Indiscreet in many things,
+Her Majesty was most notoriously so in her attachments, as witness
+her intimacy with Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lambelle.
+And the public voice had magnified - as it will - those indiscretions
+until it had torn her character into shreds.
+
+The fame of the Countess Jeanne de Valois - as Madame de la Motte
+now styled herself - increasing, she was employed as an intermediary
+by place-seekers and people with suits to prefer, who gratefully
+purchased her promises to interest herself on their behalf at Court.
+
+And then into her web of intrigue blundered the Cardinal de Rohan,
+who, as he confessed, "was completely blinded by his immense desire
+to regain the good graces of the Queen."  She aroused fresh hope in
+his despairing heart by protesting that, as some return for all the
+favours she had received from him, she would not rest until she had
+disposed the Queen more favourably towards him.
+
+Later came assurances that the Queen's hostility was melting under
+her persuasions, and at last she announced that she was authorized
+by Her Majesty to invite him to submit the justification which so
+long and so vainly he had sought permission to present.
+
+Rohan, in a vertigo of satisfaction, indited his justification,
+forwarded it to the Queen by the hand of the Countess, and some days
+later received a note in the Queen's hand upon blue-edged paper
+adorned by the lilies of France.
+
+"I rejoice," wrote Marie Antoinette, "to find at last that you were
+not in fault.  I cannot yet grant you the audience you desire, but
+as soon as the circumstances allow of it I shall let you know.  Be
+discreet."
+
+Upon the advice of the Countess of Valois, His Eminence sent a reply
+expressive of his deep gratitude and joy.
+
+Thus began a correspondence between Queen and Cardinal which
+continued regularly for a space of three months, growing gradually
+more confidential and intimate.  As time passed his solicitations
+of an audience became more pressing, until at last the Queen wrote
+announcing that, actuated by esteem and affection for him who had
+so long been kept in banishment, she herself desired the meeting.
+But it must be secret.  An open audience would still be premature;
+he had numerous enemies at Court, who, thus forewarned, might so
+exert themselves against him as yet to ruin all.
+
+To receive such a letter from a beautiful woman, and that woman a
+queen whose glories her inaccessibility had magnified a thousandfold
+in his imagination, must have all but turned the Cardinal's head.
+The secrecy of the correspondence, culminating in a clandestine
+meeting, seemed to establish between them an intimacy impossible
+under other circumstances.
+
+Into the warp of his ambition was now woven another, tenderly
+romantic, though infinitely respectful, feeling.
+
+
+You realize, I hope, the frame of mind in which the Cardinal-Prince
+took his way through that luminous, fragrant summer night towards
+the Grove of Venus.  He went to lay the cornerstone of the proud
+edifice of his ambitions.  To him it was a night of nights - a night
+of gems, he pronounced it, looking up into the jewelled vault of
+heaven.  And in that phrase he was singularly prophetic.
+
+By an avenue of boxwood and yoke-elm he entered into an open glade,
+in the middle of which there was a circle where the intended statue
+of Venus was never placed.  But if the cold marble effigy of a
+goddess were absent, the warm, living figure of a queen stood, all
+in shimmering white amid the gloom, awaiting him.
+
+Rohan checked a moment, his breath arrested, his pulses quickened.
+Then he sped forward, and, flinging off his wide-brimmed hat, he
+prostrated himself to kiss the hem of her white cambric gown.
+Something - a rose that she let fall - brushed lightly past his
+cheek.  Reverently he recovered it, accounting it a tangible symbol
+of her favour, and he looked up into the proud, lovely face - which,
+although but dimly discernible, was yet unmistakable to him
+protesting his gratitude and devotion.  He perceived that she was
+trembling, and caught the quiver in the voice that answered him.
+
+"You may hope that the past will be forgiven."
+
+And then, before he could drink more deeply of this cup of delight,
+came rapid steps to interrupt them.  A slender man, in whom the
+Cardinal seemed to recognize the Queen's valet Desclaux, thrust
+through the curtains of foliage into the grove.
+
+"Quick, madame!" he exclaimed in agitation.  "Madame la Comtesse
+and Mademoiselle d'Artois are approaching!"
+
+The Queen was whirled away, and the Cardinal discreetly effaced
+himself, his happiness tempered by chagrin at the interruption.
+
+When, on the morrow, the Countess of Valois brought him a
+blue-bordered note with Her Majesty's wishes that he should patiently
+await a propitious season for his public restoration to royal favour,
+he resigned himself with the most complete and satisfied submission.
+Had he not the memory of her voice and the rose she had given him?
+Soon afterwards came a blue-bordered note in which Marie Antoinette
+advised him to withdraw to his Bishopric of Strasbourg until she
+should judge that the desired season of :his reinstatement had
+arrived.
+
+Obediently Rohan withdrew.
+
+
+It was in the following December that the Countess of Valois's good
+offices at Court were solicited by a new client, and that she first
+beheld the famous diamond necklace.
+
+It had been made by the Court jewellers of the Rue Vendome - Bohmer
+and Bassenge - and intended for the Countess du Barry.  On the
+assembling of its component gems Bohmer had laboured for five years
+and travelled all over Europe, with the result that he had achieved
+not so much a necklace as a blaziing scarf of diamonds of a splendour
+outrivalling any jewel that the world had ever seen.
+
+Unfortunately, Bohmer was too long over the task.  Louis XV died
+inopportunely, and the firm found itself with a necklace worth two
+million livres on its hands.
+
+Hopes were founded upon Marie Antoinette's reputed extravagance.  But
+the price appalled her, while Louis XVI met the importunities of the
+jeweller with the reply that the country needed a ship of war more
+urgently than a necklace.
+
+Thereafter Bohmer offered it in various Courts of Europe, but always
+without success.  Things were becoming awkward.  The firm had borrowed
+heavily to pay for the stones, and anxiety seems to have driven Bohmer
+to the verge of desperation.  Again he offered the necklace to the
+King, announcing himself ready to make terms, and to accept payment
+in instalments; but again it was refused.
+
+Bohmer now became that pest to society, the man with a grievance
+that he must be venting everywhere.  On one occasion he so far
+forgot himself as to intrude upon the Queen as she was walking in
+the gardens of the Trianon.  Flinging himself upon his knees before
+her, he protested with sobs that he was in despair, and that unless
+she purchased the necklace he would go and drown himself.  His tears
+left her unmoved to anything but scorn.
+
+"Get up, Bohmer!" she bade him.  "I don't like such scenes.  I have
+refused the necklace, and I don't want to hear of it again.  Instead
+of drowning yourself, break it up and sell the diamonds separately."
+
+He did neither one nor the other, but continued to air his grievance;
+and among those who heard him was one Laporte, an impecunious visitor
+at the house of the Countess of Valois.
+
+Bohmer had said that he would pay a thousand louis to any one who
+found him a purchaser for the necklace.  That was enough to stir the
+needy Laporte.  He mentioned the matter to the Countess, and enlisted
+her interest.  Then he told Bohmer of her great influence with the
+Queen, and brought the jeweller to visit her with the necklace.
+
+Dazzled by the fire of those gems, the Countess nevertheless
+protested - but in an arch manner calculated to convince Bohmer of
+the contrary - that she had no power to influence Her Majesty.  Yet
+yielding with apparent reluctance to his importunities, she,
+nevertheless, ended by promising to see what could be done.
+
+On January 3d the Cardinal came back from Strasbourg.  Correspondence
+with the Queen, through Madame de Valois, had continued during his
+absence, and now, within a few days of his return, an opportunity
+was to be afforded him of proving his readiness to serve Her Majesty,
+and of placing her under a profound obligation to him.
+
+The Countess brought him a letter from Marie Antoinette, in which
+the Queen expressed her desire to acquire the necklace, but added
+that, being without the requisite funds at the moment, it would be
+necessary to settle the terms and arrange the instalments, which
+should be paid at intervals of three months.  For this she required
+an intermediary who in himself would be a sufficient guarantee to
+the Bohmers, and she ended by inviting His Eminence to act on her
+behalf.
+
+That invitation the Cardinal, who had been waiting ever since the
+meeting in the Grove of Venus for an opportunity of proving himself,
+accepted with alacrity.
+
+And so, on January 24th, the Countess drives up to the Grand Balcon,
+the jewellers' shop in the Rue Vendome.  Her dark eyes sparkle, the
+lovely, piquant face is wreathed in smiles.
+
+"Messieurs," she greets the anxious partners, "I think I can promise
+you that the necklace will very shortly be sold."
+
+The jewellers gasp in the immensity of the hope her words arouse.
+
+"The purchase," she goes on to inform them, "will be effected by a
+very great nobleman."
+
+Bassenge bursts into voluble gratitude.  She cuts it short.
+
+"That nobleman is the Cardinal-Prince Louis de Rohan.  It is with
+him that you will arrange the affair, and I advise you," she adds
+in a confidential tone, "to take every precaution, especially in
+the matter of the terms of payment that may be proposed to you.
+That is all, I think, messieurs.  You will, of course, bear in mind
+that it is no concern of mine, and that I do not so much as want my
+name mentioned in connection with it."
+
+"Perfectly, madame," splutters Bohmer, who is perspiring, although
+the air is cold - "perfectly!  We understand, and we are profoundly
+grateful.  If - "  His hands fumble nervously at a case.  "If you
+would deign, madame, to accept this trifle as an earnest of our
+indebtedness, we - "
+
+There is a tinge of haughtiness in her manner as she interrupts him.
+
+"You do not appear to understand, Bohmer, that the matter does not
+at all concern me.  I have done nothing," she insists; then, melting
+into smiles, "My only desire," she adds, "was to be of service to
+you."
+
+And upon that she departs, leaving them profoundly impressed by her
+graciousness and still more by her refusal to accept a valuable jewel.
+
+On the morrow the great nobleman she had heralded, the Cardinal
+himself, alighted at the Grand Balcon, coming, on the Queen's behalf,
+to see the necklace and settle the terms.  By the end of the week
+the bargain was concluded.  The price was fixed at 1,600,000 livres,
+which the Queen was to pay in four instalments extending over two
+years, the first falling due on the following August 1st.
+
+These terms the Cardinal embodied in a note which he forwarded to
+Madame de la Motte, that they might be ratified by the Queen.
+
+The Countess returned the note to him next day.
+
+"Her Majesty is pleased and grateful," she announced, "and she
+approves of all that you have done.  But she does not wish to sign
+anything."
+
+On that point, however, the Cardinal was insistent.  The magnitude
+of the transaction demanded it, and he positively refused to move
+further without Her Majesty's signature.
+
+The Countess departed to return again on the last day of the month
+with the document completed as the Cardinal required, bearing now
+the signature "Marie Antoinette de France," and the terms marked
+"approved" in the Queen's hand.
+
+"The Queen," Madame de la Motte informed him, "is making this
+purchase secretly, without the King's knowledge, and she particularly
+begs that this note shall not leave Your Eminence's hands.  Do not,
+therefore, allow any one to see it."
+
+Rohan gave the required promise, but, not conceiving that the
+Bohmers were included in it, he showed them the note and the Queen's
+signature when they came to wait upon him with the necklace on the
+morrow.
+
+In the dusk of evening a closed carriage drew up at the door of
+Madame de la Motte Valois's lodging on the Place Dauphine at
+Versailles.  Rohan alighted, and went upstairs with a casket under
+his arm.
+
+Madame awaited him in a white-panelled, indifferently lighted room,
+to which there was an alcove with glass doors.
+
+"You have brought the necklace?"
+
+"It is here," he replied, tapping the box with his gloved hand.
+
+"Her Majesty is expecting it to-night.  Her messenger should arrive
+at any moment.  She will be pleased with Your Eminence."
+
+"That is all that I can desire," he answered gravely; and sat down
+in answer to her invitation, the precious casket on his knees.
+
+Waiting thus, they talked desultorily for some moments.  At last
+came steps upon the stairs.
+
+"Quick!  The alcove!" she exclaimed.  "You must not be seen by Her
+Majesty's messenger."
+
+Rohan, with ready understanding, a miracle of discretion, effaced
+himself into the alcove, through the glass doors of which he could
+see what passed.
+
+The door was opened by madame's maid with the announcement:
+
+"From the Queen."
+
+A tall, slender young man in black, the Queen's attendant of that
+other night of gems - the night of the Grove of Venus - stepped
+quickly into the room, bowed like a courtier to Madame de la Motte,
+and presented a note.
+
+Madame broke the seal, then begged the messenger to withdraw for a
+moment.  When he had gone, she turned to the Cardinal, who stood
+in the doorway of the alcove.
+
+"That is Desclaux, Her Majesty's valet," she said; and held out to
+him the note, which requested the delivery of the necklace to the
+bearer.
+
+A moment later the messenger was reintroduced to receive the casket
+from the hands of Madame de la Motte.  Within five minutes the
+Cardinal was in his carriage again, driving happily back to Paris
+with his dreams of a queen's gratitude and confidence.
+
+Two days later, meeting Bohmer at Versailles, the Cardinal suggested
+to him that he should offer his thanks to the Queen for having
+purchased the necklace.
+
+Bohmer sought an opportunity for this in vain.  None offered.  It
+was also in vain that he waited to hear that the Queen had worn
+the necklace.  But he does not appear to have been anxious on that
+score.  Moreover, the Queen's abstention was credibly explained by
+Madame de la Motte to Laporte with the statement that Her Majesty
+did not wish to wear the necklace until it was paid for.
+
+With the same explanation she answered the Cardinal's inquiries in
+the following July, when he returned from a three months' sojourn
+in Strasbourg.
+
+And she took the opportunity to represent to him that one of the
+reasons why the Queen could not yet consider the necklace quite
+her own was that she found the price too high.
+
+"Indeed, she may be constrained to return it, after all, unless
+the Bohmers are prepared to be reasonable."
+
+If His Eminence was a little dismayed by this, at least any nascent
+uneasiness was quieted.  He consented to see the jewellers in the
+matter, and on July 10th - three weeks before the first instalment
+was due - he presented himself at the Grand Balcon to convey the
+Queen's wishes to the Bohmers.
+
+Bohmer scarcely troubled to prevent disgust from showing on his
+keen, swarthy countenance.  Had not his client been a queen and
+her intermediary a cardinal, he would, no doubt, have afforded it
+full expression.
+
+"The price agreed upon was already greatly below the value of the
+necklace," he grumbled.  "I should never have accepted it but for
+the difficulties under which we have been placed by the purchase
+of the stones - the money we owe and the interest we are forced to
+pay.  A further reduction is impossible."
+
+The handsome Cardinal was suave, courtly, regretful, but firm.  Since
+that was the case, there would be no alternative but to return the
+necklace.
+
+Bohmer took fright.  The annulment of the sale would bring him face
+to face with ruin.  Reluctantly, feeling that he was being imposed
+upon, he reduced the price by two hundred thousand livres, and even
+consented to write the Queen the following letter, whose epistolary
+grace suggests the Cardinal's dictation:
+
+MADAME, - We are happy to hazard the thought that our submission
+with zeal and respect to the last arrangement proposed constitutes
+a proof of our devotion and obedience to the orders of Your Majesty.
+And we have genuine satisfaction in thinking that the most
+beautiful set of diamonds in existence will serve to adorn the
+greatest and best of queens.
+
+Now it happened that Bohmer was about to deliver personally to the
+Queen some jewels with which the King was presenting her on the
+occasion of the baptism of his nephew.  He availed himself of that
+opportunity, two days later, personally to hand his letter to Her
+Majesty.  But chance brought the Comptroller-General into the room
+before she had opened it, and as a result the jeweller departed
+while the letter was, still unread.
+
+Afterwards, in the presence of Madame de Campan, who relates the
+matter in her memoirs, the Queen opened the note, pored over it a
+while, and then, perhaps with vivid memories of Bohmer's threat of
+suicide:
+
+"Listen to what that madman Bohmer writes to me," she said, and
+read the lines aloud.  "You guessed the riddles in the 'Mercure'
+this morning.  I wonder could you guess me this one."
+
+And, with a half-contemptuous shrug, she held the sheet in the flame
+of one of the tapers that stood alight on the table for the purpose
+of sealing letters.
+
+"That man exists for my torment," she continued.  "He has always
+some mad notion in his head, and must always be visiting it upon me.
+When next you see him, pray convince him how little I care for
+diamonds."
+
+And there the matter was dismissed.
+
+Days passed, and then a week before the instalment of 350,000 livres
+was due, the Cardinal received a visit from Madame de la Motte on
+the Queen's behalf.
+
+"Her Majesty," madame announced, "seems embarrassed about the
+instalment.  She does not wish to trouble you by writing about it.
+But I have thought of a way by which you could render yourself
+agreeable to her and, at the same time, set her mind at rest.  Could
+you not raise a loan for the amount?"
+
+Had not the Cardinal himself dictated to Bohmer a letter which
+Bohmer himself had delivered to the Queen, he must inevitably have
+suspected by now that all was not as it should be.  But, satisfied
+as he was by that circumstance, he addressed himself to the matter
+which Madame de la Motte proposed.  But, although Rohan was
+extraordinarily wealthy, he had ever been correspondingly lavish.
+
+Moreover, to complicate matters, there had been the bankruptcy of
+his nephew, the Prince de Guimenee, whose debts had amounted to
+some three million livres.  Characteristically, and for the sake
+of the family honour, Rohan had taken the whole of this burden
+upon his own shoulders.  Hence his resources were in a crippled
+condition, and it was beyond his power to advance so considerable
+a sum at such short notice.  Nor did he succeed in obtaining a
+loan within the little time at his disposal.
+
+His anxieties on this score were increased by a letter from the
+Queen which Madame de la Motte brought him on July 30th, in which
+Her Majesty wrote that the first instalment could not be paid until
+October 1st; but that on that date a payment of seven hundred
+thousand livres - half of the revised price -would unfailingly be
+made.  Together with this letter, Madame de la Motte handed him
+thirty thousand livres, interest on the instalment due, with which
+to pacify the jewellers.
+
+But the jewellers were not so easily to be pacified.  Bohmer, at the
+end of his patience, definitely refused to grant the postponement
+or to receive the thirty thousand livres other than as on account
+of the instalment due.
+
+The Cardinal departed in vexation.  Something must be done at once,
+or his secret relations with the Queen would be disclosed, thus
+precipitating a catastrophe and a scandal.  He summoned Madame de
+la Motte, flung her into a panic with his news and sent her away
+to see what she could do.  What she actually did would have
+surprised him.  Realizing that a crisis had been reached calling
+for bold measures, she sent for Bassenge, the milder of the two
+partners.  He came to the Rue Neuve Saint-Gilles, protesting that
+he was being abused.
+
+"Abused?" quoth she, taking him up on the word.  "Abused, do you
+say?" She laughed sharply.  "Say duped, my friend; for that is what
+has happened to you.  You are the victim of a swindle."
+
+Bassenge turned white; his prominent eyes bulged in his rather
+pasty face.
+
+"What are you saying, madame?" His voice was husky.
+
+"The Queen's signature on the note in the Cardinal's possession
+is a forgery."
+
+"A forgery! The Queen's signature?  Oh, mon Dieu!"  He stared at
+her, and his knees began to tremble.  "How do you know, madame?"
+
+"I have seen it," she answered.
+
+"But - but - "
+
+His nerveless limbs succumbing under him, he sank without ceremony
+to a chair that was opportunely near him.  With the same lack of
+ceremony, mechanically, in a dazed manner, he mopped the sweat
+that stood in beads on his brow, then raised his wig and mopped
+his head.
+
+"There is no need to waste emotion," said she composedly.  "The
+Cardinal de Rohan is very rich.  You must look to him.  He will
+pay you."
+
+"Will he?"
+
+Hope and doubt were blended in the question.
+
+"What else?" she asked.  "Can you conceive that he will permit
+such a scandal to burst about his name and the name of the Queen?"
+
+Bassenge saw light.  The rights and wrongs of the case, and who
+might be the guilty parties, were matters of very secondary
+importance.  What mattered was that the firm should recover the
+14,000,000 livres for which the necklace had been sold; and
+Bassenge was quick to attach full value to the words of Madame
+de la Motte.
+
+Unfortunately for everybody concerned, including the jewellers
+themselves, Bohmer's mind was less supple.  Panic-stricken by
+Bassenge's report, he was all for the direct method.  There was
+no persuading him to proceed cautiously, and to begin by visiting
+the Cardinal.  He tore away to Versailles at once, intent upon
+seeing the Queen.  But the Queen, as we know, had had enough of
+Bohmer.  He had to content himself with pouring his mixture of
+intercessions and demands into the ears of Madame de Campan.
+
+"You have been swindled, Bohmer," said the Queen's lady promptly.
+"Her Majesty never received the necklace."
+
+Bohmer would not be convinced.  Disbelieving, and goaded to fury,
+he returned to Bassenge.
+
+Bassenge, however, though perturbed, retained his calm.  The
+Cardinal, he insisted, was their security, and it was impossible
+to doubt that the Cardinal would fulfil his obligations at all
+costs, rather than be overwhelmed by a scandal.
+
+And this, no doubt, is what would have happened but for that hasty
+visit of Bohmer's to Versailles.  It ruined everything.  As a
+result of it, Bohmer was summoned to wait instantly upon the Queen
+in the mater of some paste buckles.
+
+The Queen received the jeweller in private, and her greeting proved
+that the paste buckles were a mere pretext.  She demanded to know
+the meaning of his words to Madame de Campan.
+
+Bohmer could not rid himself of the notion that he was being trifled
+with.  Had he not written and himself delivered to the Queen a
+letter in which he thanked her for purchasing the necklace, and had
+not that letter remained unanswered - a silent admission that the
+necklace was in her hands?  In his exasperation he became insolent.
+
+"The meaning, madame?  The meaning is that I require payment for my
+necklace, that the patience of my creditors is exhausted, and that
+unless you order the money to be paid, I am a ruined man!"
+
+Marie Antoinette considered him in cold, imperious anger.
+
+"Are you daring to suggest that your necklace is in my possession?"
+
+Bohmer was white to the lips, his hands worked nervously.
+
+"Does Your Majesty deny it?"
+
+"You are insolent!" she exclaimed.  "You will be good enough to
+answer questions, not to ask them.  Answer me, then.  Do you suggest
+that I have your necklace?"
+
+But a desperate man is not easily intimidated.
+
+"No, madame; I affirm it!  It was the Countess of Valois who - "
+
+"Who is the Countess of Valois?"
+
+That sudden question, sharply uttered, was a sword of doubt through
+the heart of Bohmer's confidence.  He stared wide-eyed a moment at
+the indignant lady before him, then collected himself, and made as
+plain a tale as he could of the circumstances under which he had
+parted with the necklace Madame de la Motte's intervention, the
+mediation of the Cardinal de Rohan with Her Majesty's signed
+approval of the terms, and the delivery of the necklace to His
+Eminence for transmission to the Queen.
+
+Marie Antoinette listened in increasing horror and anger.  A flush
+crept into her pale cheeks.
+
+"You will prepare and send me a written statement of what you have
+just told me," she said.  "You have leave to go."
+
+That interview took place on August 9th.  The 15th was the Feast of
+the Assumption, and also the name-day of the Queen, therefore a
+gala day at Court, bringing a concourse of nobility to Versailles.
+Mass was to be celebrated in the royal chapel at ten o'clock, and
+the celebrant, as by custom established for the occasion, was the
+Grand Almoner of France, the Cardinal de Rohan.
+
+But at ten o'clock a meeting was being held in the King's cabinet,
+composed of the King and Queen, the Baron de Breteuil, and the
+Keeper of the Seals, Miromesnil.  They were met, as they believed,
+to decide upon a course of action in the matter of a diamond
+necklace.  In reality, these puppets in the hands of destiny were
+helping to decide the fate of the French monarchy.
+
+The King, fat, heavy, and phlegmatic, sat in a gilded chair by an
+ormolu-encrusted writing-table.  His bovine eyes were troubled.
+Two wrinkles of vexation puckered the flesh above his great nose.
+Beside, and slightly behind him, stood the Queen, white and
+imperious, whilst facing them stood Monsieur de Breteuil, reading
+aloud the statement which Bohmer had drawn up.
+
+When he had done, there was a moment's utter silence.  Then the
+King spoke, his voice almost plaintive.
+
+"What is to be done, then? But what is to be done?"
+
+It was the Queen who answered him, harshly and angrily.
+
+"When the Roman purple and a princely title are but masks to cover
+a swindler, there is only one thing to be done.  This swindler must
+be exposed and punished."
+
+"But," the King faltered, "we have not heard the Cardinal."
+
+"Can you think that Bohmer, that any man, would dare to lie upon
+such a matter?"
+
+"But consider, madame, the Cardinal's rank and family," calmly
+interposed the prudent Miromesnil; "consider the stir, the scandal
+that must ensue if this matter is made public."
+
+But the obedient daughter of Marie Therese, hating Rohan at her
+mother's bidding and for her mother's sake, was impatient of any
+such wise considerations.
+
+"What shall the scandal signify to us?" she demanded.  The King
+looked at Breteuil.
+
+"And you, Baron? What is your view?"
+
+Breteuil, Rohan's mortal enemy, raised his shoulders and flipped
+the document.
+
+"In the face of this, Sire, it seems to me that the only course is
+to arrest the Cardinal."
+
+"You believe, then - " began the King, and checked, leaving the
+sentence unfinished.
+
+But Breteuil had understood.
+
+"I know that the Cardinal must be pressed for money," he said.
+"Ever prodigal in his expenditure, he is further saddled with the
+debts of the Prince de Guimenee."
+
+"And you can believe," the King cried, "that a Prince of the House
+of Rohan, however pressed for money, could -  Oh, it is unimaginable!"
+
+"Yet has he not stolen my name?" the Queen cut in.  "Is he not proven
+a common, stupid forger?"
+
+"We have not heard him," the King reminded her gently.
+
+"And His Eminence might be able to explain," ventured Miromesnil.
+"It were certainly prudent to give him the opportunity."
+
+Slowly the King nodded his great, powdered head.  "Go and find him.
+Bring him at once!" he bade Breteuil; and Breteuil bowed and
+departed.
+
+Very soon he returned, and he held the door whilst the handsome
+Cardinal, little dreaming what lay before him, serene and calm, a
+commanding figure in his cassock of scarlet watered silk, rustled
+forward into the royal presence, and so came face to face with the
+Queen for the first time since that romantic night a year ago in
+the Grove of Venus.
+
+Abruptly the King launched his thunderbolt.
+
+"Cousin," he asked, "what purchase is this of a diamond necklace
+that you are said to have made in the Queen's name?"
+
+King and Cardinal looked into each other's eyes, the King's
+narrowing, the Cardinal's dilating, the King leaning forward in his
+chair, elbows on the table, the Cardinal standing tense and suddenly
+rigid.
+
+Slowly the colour ebbed from Rohan's face, leaving it deathly pale.
+His eyes sought the Queen, and found her contemptuous glance, her
+curling lip.  Then at last his handsome head sank a little forward.
+
+"Sire," he said unsteadily, "I see that I have been duped.  But I
+have duped nobody."
+
+"You have no reason to be troubled, then.  You need but to explain."
+
+Explain!  That was precisely what he could not do.  Besides, what
+was the nature of the explanation demanded of him?  Whilst he stood
+stricken there, it was the Queen who solved this question.
+
+"If, indeed, you have been duped," she said scornfully, her colour
+high, her eyes like points of steel, "you have been self-duped.  But
+even then it is beyond belief that self-deception could have urged
+you to the lengths of passing yourself off as my intermediary - you,
+who should know yourself to be the last man in France I should
+employ, you to whom I have not spoken once in eight years."  Tears
+of anger glistened in her eyes; her voice shrilled up.  "And yet,
+since you have not denied it, since you put forward this pitiful
+plea that you have been duped, we must believe the unbelievable."
+
+Thus at a blow she shattered the fond hopes he had been cherishing
+ever since the night of gems - of gems, forsooth! - in the Grove of
+Venus; thus she laid his ambition in ruins about him, and left the
+man himself half stunned.
+
+Observing his disorder, the ponderous but kindly monarch rose.
+
+"Come, my cousin," he said more gently, "collect yourself.  Sit
+down here and write what you may have to say in answer."
+
+And with that he passed into the library beyond, accompanied by the
+Queen and the two Ministers.
+
+Alone, Rohan staggered forward and sank nervelessly into the chair.
+He took up a pen, pondered a moment, and began to write.  But he
+did not yet see clear.  He could not yet grasp the extent to which
+he had been deceived, could not yet believe that those treasured
+notes from Marie Antoinette were forgeries, that it was not the
+Queen who had met him in the Grove of Venus and given him the rose
+whose faded petals kept those letters company in a portfolio of red
+morocco.  But at least it was clear to him that, for the sake of
+honour - the Queen's honour - he must assume it so; and in that
+assumption he now penned his statement.
+
+When it was completed, himself he bore it to the King in the
+library.
+
+Louis read it with frowning brows; then passed it to the Queen.
+
+"Have you the necklace now?" he asked Rohan.
+
+"Sir, I left it in the hands of this woman Valois."
+
+"Where is this woman?"
+
+"I do not know, Sire."
+
+"And the letter of authority bearing the Queen's signature, which
+the jewellers say you presented to them - where is that?"
+
+"I have it, Sire.  I will place it before you.  It is only now that
+I realize that it is a forgery."
+
+"Only now!" exclaimed the Queen in scorn.
+
+"Her Majesty's name has been compromised," said the King sternly.
+"It must be cleared.  As King and as husband my duty is clear.
+Your Eminence must submit to arrest."
+
+Rohan fell back a step in stupefaction.  For disgrace and dismissal
+he was prepared, but not for this.
+
+"Arrest?" he whispered.  "Ah, wait, Sire.  The publicity!  The
+scandal!  Think of that!  As for the necklace, I will pay for it
+myself, and so pay for my credulous folly.  I beseech you, Sire,
+to let the matter end here.  I implore it for my own sake, for the
+sake of the Prince de Soubise and the name of Rohan, which would
+be smirched unjustly and to no good purpose."
+
+He spoke with warmth and force; and, without adding more, yet
+conveyed an impression that much more could be said for the course
+he urged.
+
+The King hesitated, considering.  Noting this, the prudent,
+far-seeing Miromesnil ventured to develop the arguments at which
+Rohan had hinted, laying stress upon the desirability of avoiding
+scandal.
+
+Louis was nodding, convinced, when Marie Antoinette, unable longer
+to contain her rancour, broke into opposition of those prudent
+measures.
+
+"This hideous affair must be disclosed," she insisted.  "It is due
+to me that it should publicly be set right.  The Cardinal shall
+tell the world how he came to suppose that, not having spoken to
+him for eight years, I could have wished to make use of his services
+in the purchase of this necklace."
+
+She was in tears, and her weak, easily swayed husband accounted her
+justified in her demand.  And so, to the great consternation of all
+the world, Prince Louis de Rohan was arrested like a common thief.
+
+A foolish, indiscreet, short-sighted woman had allowed her rancour
+to override all other considerations - careless of consequences,
+careless of injustice so that her resentment, glutted by her hatred
+of the Cardinal, should be gratified.  The ungenerous act was
+terribly to recoil upon her.  In tears and blood was she to expiate
+her lack of charity; very soon she was to reap its bitter fruits.
+
+Saint-Just, a very prominent counsellor of the Parliament, one of
+the most advanced apostles of the new ideas that were to find full
+fruition in the Revolution, expressed the popular feeling in the
+matter.
+
+"Great and joyful affair!  A cardinal and a queen implicated in a
+forgery and a swindle!  Filth on the crosier and the sceptre!  What
+a triumph for the ideas of liberty!"
+
+At the trial that followed before Parliament, Madame de la Motte,
+a man named Reteaux de Villette - who had forged the Queen's hand
+and impersonated Desclaux and a Mademoiselle d'Oliva - who had used
+her striking resemblance to Marie Antoinette to impersonate the
+Queen in the Grove of Venus were found guilty and sentenced.  But
+the necklace was not recovered.  It had been broken up, and some
+of the diamonds were already sold; others were being sold in London
+by Captain de la Motte, who had gone thither for the purpose, and
+who prudently remained there.
+
+The Cardinal was acquitted, amid intense public joy and acclamation,
+which must have been gall and wormwood to the Queen.  His powerful
+family, the clergy of France, and the very people, with whom he had
+ever been popular, had all laboured strenuously to vindicate him.
+And thus it befell that the one man the Queen had aimed at crushing
+was the only person connected with the affair who came out of it
+unhurt.  The Queen's animus against the Cardinal aroused against her
+the animus of his friends of all classes.  Appalling libels of her
+were circulated throughout Europe.  It was thought and argued that
+she was more deeply implicated in the swindle than had transpired,
+that Madame de la Motte was a scapegoat, that the Queen should have
+stood her trial with the others, and that she was saved only by the
+royalty that hedged her.
+
+Conceive what a weapon this placed in the hands of the men of the
+new ideas of liberty - men who were bent on proving the corruption
+of a system they sought to destroy!
+
+Marie Antoinette should have foreseen something of this.  She might
+have done so had not her hatred blinded her, had she been less
+intent upon seizing the opportunity at all costs to make Rohan pay
+for his barbed witticism upon her mother.  She might have been
+spared much had she but spared Rohan when the chance was hers.  As
+it was, the malevolent echoes of the affair and of Saint-Just's
+exultation were never out of her ears.  They followed her to her
+trial eight years later before the revolutionary tribunal.  They
+followed her to the very scaffold, of which they had undoubtedly
+supplied a plank.
+
+
+
+
+VIII,  THE NIGHT OF TERROR
+
+THE DROWNINGS AT NANTES UNDER CARRIER
+
+
+The Revolutionary Committee of the city of Nantes, reinforced by
+some of the administrators of the district and a few members of the
+People's Society, sat in the noble hall of the Cour des Comptes,
+which still retained much of its pre-republican sumptuousness.  They
+sat expectantly - Goullin, the attorney, president of the committee,
+a frail, elegant valetudinarian, fierily eloquent; Grandmaison,
+the fencing-master, who once had been a gentleman, fierce of eye
+and inflamed of countenance; Minee, the sometime bishop, now
+departmental president; Pierre Chaux, the bankrupt merchant; the
+sans-culotte Forget, of the People's Society, an unclean, ill-kempt
+ruffian; and some thirty others called like these from every walk
+of life.
+
+Lamps were lighted, and under their yellow glare the huddled company
+ - for the month was December, and the air of the vast room was
+chill and dank - looked anxious and ill at ease.
+
+Suddenly the doors were thrown open by an usher; and his voice rang
+loud in announcement -
+
+"The Citizen Representative Carrier."
+
+The great man came in, stepping quickly.  Of middle height, very
+frail and delicate, his clay-colored face was long and thin, with
+arched eyebrows, a high nose, and a loose, coarse mouth.  His deeply
+sunken dark eyes glared fiercely, and wisps of dead-black hair,
+which had escaped the confining ribbon of his queue, hung about his
+livid brow.  He was wrapped in a riding-coat of bottle-green,
+heavily lined with fur, the skirts reaching down to the tops of his
+Hessian boots, and the enormous turned-up collar almost touching
+the brim of his round hat.  Under the coat his waist was girt with
+the tricolour of office, and there were gold rings in his ears.
+
+Such at the age of five-and-thirty was Jean Baptiste Carrier,
+Representative of the Convention with the Army of the West, the
+attorney who once had been intended by devout parents for the
+priesthood.  He had been a month in Nantes, sent thither to purge
+the body politic.
+
+He reached a chair placed in the focus of the gathering, which sat
+in a semicircle.  Standing by it, one of his lean hands resting
+upon the back, he surveyed them, disgust in his glance, a sneer
+curling his lip, so terrible and brutal of aspect despite his
+frailness that more than one of those stout fellows quailed now
+before him.
+
+Suddenly he broke into torrential speech, his voice shrill and harsh:
+
+"I do not know by what fatality it happens, but happen it does, that
+during the month that I have been in Nantes you have never ceased
+to give me reason to complain of you.  I have summoned you to meet
+me here that you may justify yourselves, if you can, for your
+ineptitude!"  And he flung himself into the chair, drawing his
+fur-lined coat about him.  "Let me hear from you!" he snapped.
+
+Minee, the unfrocked bishop, preserving still a certain episcopal
+portliness of figure, a certain episcopal oiliness of speech,
+respectfully implored the representative to be more precise.
+
+The invitation flung him into a passion.  His irascibility, indeed,
+deserved to become a byword.
+
+"Name of a name!" he shrilled, his sunken eyes ablaze, his face
+convulsed.  "Is there a thing I can mention in this filthy city of
+yours that is not wrong?  Everything is wrong!  You have failed in
+your duty to provide adequately for the army of Vendee.  Angers
+has fallen, and now the brigands are threatening Nantes itself.
+There is abject want in the city, disease is rampant; people are
+dying of hunger in the streets and of typhus in the prisons.  And
+sacre nom! - you ask me to be precise!  I'll be precise in telling
+you where lies the fault.  It lies in your lousy administration.
+Do you call yourselves administrators?  You - "  He became
+unprintable.  "I have come here to shake you out of your torpor,
+and by -- I'll shake you out of it or I'll have the blasted heads
+off the lot of you."
+
+They shivered with chill fear under the wild glare of his sunken
+eyes.
+
+"Well?" he barked after a long pause.  "Are you all dumb as well
+as idiots?"
+
+It was the ruffian Forget who had the courage to answer him:
+
+"I have told the People's Society that if the machine works badly
+it is because the Citizen Carrier refuses to consult with the
+administration."
+
+"You told them that, did you, you -- liar?" screeched Carrier.
+"Am I not here now to consult with you?  And should I not have
+come before had you suggested it?  Instead, you have waited until,
+of my own accord, I should come to tell you that your
+administration is ruining Nantes."
+
+Goullin, the eloquent and elegant Goullin, rose to soothe him:
+
+"Citizen Representative, we admit the truth of all that you have
+said.  There has been a misunderstanding.  We could not take it
+upon ourselves to summon the august representative of the Sacred
+People.  I We have awaited your own good pleasure, and now that
+you have made this manifest, there is no reason why the machine
+should not work effectively.  The evils of which you speak exist,
+alas!  But they are not so deeply rooted that, working under your
+guidance and advice, we cannot uproot them, rendering the soil
+fertile once more of good under the beneficent fertilizing showers
+of liberty."
+
+Mollified, Carrier grunted approval.
+
+"That is well said, Citizen Goullin.  The fertilizer needed by
+the soil is blood - the bad blood of aristocrats and federalists,
+and I can promise you, in the name of the august people, that it
+shall be abundantly provided."
+
+The assembly broke into applause, and his vanity melted to it.  He
+stood up, expressed his gratification at being so completely
+understood, opened his arms, and invited the departmental president,
+Minee, to come down and receive the kiss of brotherhood.
+
+Thereafter they passed to the consideration of measures of
+improvement, of measures to combat famine and disease.  In Carrier's
+view there was only one way of accomplishing this - the number of
+mouths to be fed must be reduced, the diseased must be eliminated.
+It was the direct, the radical, the heroic method.
+
+That very day six prisoners in Le Bouffay had been sentenced to
+death for attempting to escape.
+
+"How do we know," he asked, "that those six include all the guilty?
+How do we know that all in Le Bouffay do not share the guilt?  The
+prisoners are riddled with disease, which spreads to the good
+patriots of Nantes; they eat bread, which is scarce, whilst good
+patriots starve.  We must have the heads off all those blasted
+swine!"  He took fire at his own suggestion.  "Aye, that would be
+a useful measure.  We'll deal with it at once.  Let some one fetch
+the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal."
+
+He was fetched - a man of good family and a lawyer, named Francois
+Phelippes.
+
+"Citizen President," Carrier greeted him, "the administration of
+Nantes has been considering an important measure.  To-day you
+sentenced to death six prisoners in Le Bouffay for attempting to
+escape.  You are to postpone execution so as to include all the
+Bouffay prisoners in the sentence."
+
+Although an ardent revolutionary, Phelippes was a logically minded
+man with a lawyer's reverence for the sacredness of legal form.
+This command, issued with such cynical coldness, and repudiated by
+none of those present, seemed to him as grotesque and ridiculous
+as it was horrible.
+
+"But that is impossible, Citizen Representative," said he.
+
+"Impossible!" snarled Carrier.  "A fool's word.  The administration
+desires you to understand that it is not impossible.  The sacred
+will of the august people - "
+
+Phelippes interrupted him without ceremony.
+
+"There is no power in France that can countermand the execution of
+a sentence of the law."
+
+"No - no power!"
+
+Carrier's loose mouth fell open.  He was too amazed to be angry.
+
+"Moreover," Phelippes pursued calmly, "there is the fact that all
+the other prisoners in Le Bouffay are innocent of the offence for
+which the six are to die."
+
+"What has that to do with it?" roared Carrier.  "Last year I rode
+a she-ass that could argue better than you!  In the name of --, what
+has that to do with it?"
+
+But there were members of the assembly who thought with Phelippes,
+and who, whilst lacking the courage to express themselves, yet
+found courage to support another who so boldly expressed them.
+
+Carrier sprang up quivering with rage before that opposition.  "It
+seems to me," he snarled, "that there are more than the scoundrels
+in Le Bouffay who need to be shortened by a head for the good of
+the nation.  I tell you that you are slaying the commonweal by your
+slowness and circumspection.  Let all the scoundrels perish!"
+
+A handsome, vicious youngster named Robin made chorus.
+
+"Patriots are without bread!  It is fitting that the scoundrels
+should die, and not eat the bread of starving patriots."
+
+Carrier shook his fist at the assembly.
+
+"You hear, you --! I cannot pardon whom the law condemns."
+
+It was an unfortunate word, and Phelippes fastened on it.
+
+"That is the truth, Citizen Representative," said Phelippes.  "And
+as for the prisoners in Le Bouffay, you will wait until the law
+condemns them."
+
+And without staying to hear more, he departed as firmly as he had
+come, indifferent to the sudden uproar.
+
+When he had gone, the Representative flung himself into his chair
+again, biting his lip.
+
+"There goes a fellow who will find his way to the guillotine in
+time," he growled.
+
+But he was glad to be rid of him, and would not have him brought
+back.  He saw how the opposition of Phelippes had stiffened the
+weaker opposition of some of those in the assembly.  If he was to
+have his way he would contrive better without the legal-minded
+President of the Revolutionary Tribunal.  And his way he had in
+the end, though not until he had stormed and cursed and reviled the
+few who dared to offer remonstrances to his plan of wholesale
+slaughter.
+
+When at last he took his departure, it was agreed that the assembly
+should proceed to elect a jury which was to undertake the duty of
+drawing up immediately a list of those confined in the prisons of
+Nantes.  This list they were to deliver when ready to the committee,
+which would know how to proceed, for Carrier had made his meaning
+perfectly clear.  The first salutary measure necessary to combat
+the evils besetting the city was to wipe out at once the inmates of
+all the prisons in Nantes.
+
+In the chill December dawn of the next day the committee - which
+had sat all night under the presidency of Goullin forwarded a list
+of some five hundred prisoners to General Boivin, the commandant
+of the city of Nantes, together with an order to collect them
+without a moment's delay, take them to L'Eperonniere, and there
+have them shot.
+
+But Boivin was a soldier, and a soldier is not a sans-culotte.  He
+took the order to Phelippes, with the announcement that he had no
+intention of obeying it.  Phelippes, to Boivin's amazement, agreed
+with him.  He sent the order back to the committee, denouncing it
+as flagrantly illegal, and reminding them that it was illegal to
+remove any prisoner, no matter by whose order, without such an order
+as might follow upon a decision of the Tribunal.
+
+The committee, intimidated by this firmness on the part of the
+President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, dared not insist, and
+there the matter remained.
+
+When Carrier learnt of it the things he said were less than ever
+fit for publication.  He raved like a madman at the very thought
+that a quibbling lawyer should stand in the very path of him, the
+august representative of the Sacred People.
+
+It had happened that fifty-three priests, who had been brought to
+Nantes a few days before, were waiting in the sheds of the entrepot
+for prison accommodation, so that their names did not yet appear
+upon any of the prison registers.  As a solatium to his wounded
+feelings, he ordered his friends of the Marat Company to get rid
+of them.
+
+Lamberty, the leader of the Marats, asked him how it should be done.
+
+"How?" he croaked.  "Not so much mystery, my friend.  Fling the
+swine into the water, and so let's be rid of them.  There will be
+plenty of their kind left in France."
+
+But he seems to have explained himself further, and what precisely
+were his orders, and how they were obeyed, transpires from a letter
+which he wrote to the Convention, stating that those fifty-three
+wretched priests, "being confined in a boat on the Loire, were last
+night swallowed up by the river."  And he added the apostrophe,
+"What a revolutionary torrent is the Loire!"
+
+The Convention had no illusions as to his real meaning; and when
+Carrier heard that his letter had been applauded by the National
+Assembly, he felt himself encouraged to break down all barriers of
+mere legality that might obstruct his path.  And, after all, what
+the Revolutionary Committee as a body - intimidated by Phelippes
+ - dared not do could be done by his faithful and less punctilious
+friends of the Marat Company.
+
+This Marat Company, the police of the Revolutionary Committee,
+enrolled from the scourings of Nantes' sans-culottism, and
+captained by a ruffian named Fleury, had been called into being by
+Carrier himself with the assistance of Goullin.
+
+On the night of the 24th Frimaire of the year III (December 14, 1793,
+old style), which was a Saturday, Fleury mustered some thirty of his
+men, and took them to the Cour des Comptes, where they were awaited
+by Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, and some other members of the
+committee entirely devoted to Carrier.  From these the Marats
+received their formal instructions.
+
+"Plague," Goullin informed them, "is raging in the gaols, and its
+ravages must be arrested.  You will therefore proceed this evening
+to the prison of Le Bouffay in order to take over the prisoners
+whom you will march up to the Quay La Fosse, whence they will be
+shipped to Belle Isle."
+
+
+In a cell of that sordid old building known as Le Bouffay lay a
+cocassier, an egg and poultry dealer, arrested some three years
+before upon a charge of having stolen a horse, and since forgotten.
+His own version was that a person of whom he knew very little had
+entrusted him with the sale of the stolen animal in possession of
+which he was discovered.
+
+The story sounds familiar; it is the sort of story that must have
+done duty many times; and it is probable that the cocassier was no
+better than he should have been.  Nevertheless Fate selected him
+to be one of her unconscious instruments.  His name was Leroy, and
+we have his own word for it that he was a staunch patriot.  The
+horse business was certainly in the best vein of sans-culottism.
+
+Leroy was awakened about ten o'clock that night by sounds that were
+very unusual in that sombre, sepulchral prison.  They were sounds
+of unbridled revelry - snatches of ribald song, bursts of coarse,
+reverberating laughter and they proceeded, as it seemed to him,
+from the courtyard and the porter's lodge.
+
+He crawled from the dank straw which served him for a bed, and
+approached the door to listen.  Clearly the porter Laqueze was
+entertaining friends and making unusually merry.  It was also to be
+gathered that Laqueze's friends were getting very drunk.  What the
+devil did it mean?
+
+His curiosity was soon to be very fully gratified.  Came heavy steps
+up the stone staircase, the clatter of sabots, the clank of weapons,
+and through the grille of his door an increasing light began to beat.
+
+Some one was singing the "Carmagnole" in drunken, discordant tones.
+Keys rattled, bolts were drawn; doors were being flung open.  The
+noise increased.  Above the general din he heard the detestable
+voice of the turnkey.
+
+"Come and see my birds in their cages.  Come and see my pretty birds."
+
+Leroy began to have an uneasy premonition that the merrymaking
+portended sinister things.
+
+"Get up, all of you!" bawled the turnkey.  "Up and pack your traps.
+You're to go on a voyage.  No laggards, now.  Up with you!"
+
+The door of Leroy's cell was thrown open in its turn, and he found
+himself confronting a group of drunken ruffians.  One of these - a
+red-capped giant with long, black mustaches and a bundle of ropes
+over one arm suddenly pounced upon him.  The cocassier was an active,
+vigorous young man.  But, actuated by fear and discretion, he
+permitted himself tamely to be led away.
+
+Along the stone-flagged corridor he went, and on every hand beheld
+his fellow-prisoners in the same plight, being similarly dragged
+from their cells and similarly hurried below.  At the head of the
+stairs one fellow, perfectly drunk, was holding a list, hiccupping
+over names which he garbled ludicrously as he called them out.  He
+was lighted in his task by a candle held by another who was no less
+drunk.  The swaying pair seemed to inter-support one another
+grotesquely.
+
+Leroy suffered himself to be led down the stairs, and so came to
+the porter's lodge, where he beheld a half-dozen Marats assembled
+round a table, with bumpers of wine before them, bawling, singing,
+cursing, and cracking lewd jests at the expense of each prisoner
+as he entered.  The place was in a litter.  A lamp had been smashed,
+and there was a puddle of wine on the floor from a bottle that had
+been knocked over.  On a bench against the wall were ranged a number
+of prisoners, others lay huddled on the floor, and all of them
+were pinioned.
+
+Two or three of the Marats lurched up to Leroy, and ran their hands
+over him, turning out his pockets, and cursing him foully for their
+emptiness.  He saw the same office performed upon others, and saw
+them stripped of money, pocket-books, watches, rings, buckles, and
+whatever else of value they happened to possess.  One man, a priest,
+was even deprived of his shoes by a ruffian who was in want of
+foot-gear.
+
+As they were pinioning his wrists, Leroy looked up.  He confesses
+that he was scared.
+
+"What is this for?" he asked.  "Does it mean death?"
+
+With an oath he was bidden to ask no questions.
+
+"If I die," he assured them, "you will be killing a good republican."
+
+A tall man with an inflamed countenance and fierce, black eyes, that
+were somewhat vitreous, now leered down upon him.
+
+"You babbling fool!  It's not your life, it's your property we want."
+
+This was Grandmaison, the fencing-master, who once had been a
+gentleman.  He had been supping with Carrier, and he had only just
+arrived at Le Bouffay, accompanied by Goullin.  He found the work
+behind time, and told them so.
+
+"Leave that fellow now, Jolly.  He's fast enough.  Up and fetch the
+rest.  It's time to be going . . . time to be going."
+
+Flung aside now that he was pinioned, Leroy sat down on the floor
+and looked about him.  Near him an elderly man was begging for a cup
+of water.  They greeted the prayer with jeering laughter.
+
+"Water! By Sainte Guillotine, he asks for water!"  The drunken
+sans-culottes were intensely amused.  "Patience, my friend -
+patience, and you shall drink your fill.  You shall drink from the
+great cup."
+
+Soon the porter's lodge was crowded with prisoners, and they were
+overflowing into the passage.
+
+Came Grandmaison cursing and swearing at the sluggishness of the
+Marats, reminding them - as he had been reminding them for the last
+hour - that it was time to be off, that the tide was on the ebb.
+
+Stimulated by him, Jolly - the red-capped giant with the black
+mustaches - and some others of the Marat Company, set themselves
+to tie the prisoners into chains of twenty, further to ensure
+against possible evasion.  They were driven into the chilly
+courtyard, and there Grandmaison, followed by a fellow with a
+lantern, passed along the ranks counting them.
+
+The result infuriated him.
+
+"A hundred and five!" he roared, and swore horribly.  "You have been
+here nearly five hours, and in all that time you have managed to
+truss up only a hundred and five.  Are we never to get through with
+it?  I tell you the tide is ebbing.  It is time to be off."
+
+Laqueze, the porter of Le Bouffay, with whose food and wine those
+myrmidons of the committee had made so disgracefully free, came to
+assure him that he had all who were in the prison.
+
+"All?" cried Grandmaison, aghast.  "But according to the list there
+should have been nearer two hundred."  And he raised his voice to
+call: "Goullin!  Hola, Goullin!  Where the devil is Goullin?"
+
+"The list," Laqueze told him, "was drawn up from the register.  But
+you have not noted that many have died since they came - we have
+had the fever here - and that a few are now in hospital."
+
+"In hospital!  Bah! Go up, some of you, and fetch them.  We are
+taking them somewhere where they will be cured."  And then he
+hailed the elegant Goullin, who came up wrapped in a cloak.  "Here's
+a fine bathing-party!" he grumbled.  "A rare hundred of these swine!"
+
+Goullin turned to Laqueze.
+
+"What have you done with the fifteen brigands I sent you this
+evening?"
+
+"But they only reached Nantes to-day," said Laqueze, who understood
+nothing of these extraordinary proceedings.  "They have not yet
+been registered, not even examined."
+
+"I asked you what you have done with them?" snapped Goullin.
+
+"They are upstairs."
+
+"Then fetch them.  They are as good as any others."
+
+With these, and a dozen or so dragged from sick-beds, the total was
+made up to about a hundred and thirty.
+
+The Marats, further reinforced now by half a company of National
+Guards, set out from the prison towards five o'clock in the morning;
+urging their victims along with blows and curses.
+
+Our cocassier found himself bound wrist to wrist with a young
+Capuchin brother, who stumbled along in patient resignation, his
+head bowed, his lips moving as if he were in prayer.
+
+"Can you guess what they are going to do with us?" murmured Leroy.
+
+He caught the faint gleam of the Capuchin's eyes in the gloom.
+
+"I do not know, brother.  Commend yourself to God, and so be prepared
+for whatever may befall."
+
+The answer was not very comforting to a man of Leroy's temperament.
+He stumbled on, and they came now upon the Place du Bouffay, where
+the red guillotine loomed in ghostly outline, and headed towards
+the Quai Tourville.  Thence they were marched by the river the whole
+length of the Quai La Fosse.  Fear spreading amongst them, some
+clamours were raised, to be instantly silenced by blows and
+assurances that they were to be shipped to Belle Isle, where they
+were to be set to work to build a fort.
+
+The cocassier thought this likely enough, and found it more
+comforting than saying his prayers - a trick which he had long
+since lost.
+
+As they defiled along the quays, an occasional window was thrown
+up, and an inquisitive head protruded, to be almost instantly
+withdrawn again.
+
+On the Cale Robin at last they were herded into a shed which opened
+on to the water.  Here they found a large lighter alongside, and
+they beheld in the lantern-light the silhouettes of a half-dozen
+shipwrights busily at work upon it, whilst the place rang with the
+blows of hammers and the scream of saws.
+
+Some of those nearest the barge saw what was being done.  Two great
+ports were being opened in the vessel's side, and over one of these
+thus opened the shipwrights were nailing planks.  They observed that
+these ports, which remained above the water-line now that the barge
+was empty, would be well below it once she were laden, and conceiving
+that they perceived at last the inhuman fate awaiting them, their
+terror rose again.  They remembered snatches of conversation and
+grim jests uttered by the Marats in Le Bouffay, which suddenly
+became clear, and the alarm spreading amongst them, they writhed
+and clamoured, screamed for mercy, cursed and raved.
+
+Blows were showered upon them.  In vain was it sought to quiet them
+again with that fable of a fort to be constructed on Belle Isle.
+One of them in a frenzy of despair tore himself free of his bonds,
+profited by a moment of confusion, and vanished so thoroughly that
+Grandmaison and his men lost a quarter of an hour seeking him in
+vain, and would have so spent the remainder of the night but for a
+sharp word from a man in a greatcoat and a round hat who stood
+looking on in conversation with Goullin.
+
+"Get on, man!  Never mind that one!  We'll have him later.  It will
+be daylight soon.  You've wasted time enough already."
+
+It was Carrier.
+
+He had come in person to see the execution of his orders, and at
+his command Grandmaison now proceeded to the loading.  A ladder was
+set against the side of the lighter by which the prisoners were to
+descend.  The cords binding them in chains were now severed, and
+they were left pinioned only by the wrists.  They were ordered to
+embark.  But as they were slow to obey, and as some, indeed, hung
+back wailing and interceding, he and Jolly took them by their
+collars, thrust them to the edge, and bundled them neck and crop
+down into the hold, recking nothing of broken limbs.  Finding this
+method of embarkation more expeditious, the use of the ladder was
+neglected thenceforth.
+
+Among the last to be thus flung aboard was our cocassier Leroy.
+He fell soft upon a heaving, writhing mass of humanity, which only
+gradually shook down and sorted itself out on the bottom of the
+lighter when the hatches overhead were being nailed down.  Yet by
+an odd chance the young Capuchin and Leroy, who had been companions
+in the chain, were not separated even now.  Amid the human welter
+in that agitated place of darkness, the cries and wails that rang
+around him, Leroy recognized the voice of the young friar exhorting
+them to prayer.
+
+They were in the stern of the vessel, against one of the sides, and
+Leroy, who still kept a grip on the wits by which he had lived, bade
+the Capuchin hold up his wrists.  Then he went nosing like a dog,
+until at last he found them, and his strong teeth fastened upon the
+cord that bound them, and began with infinite patience to gnaw it
+through.
+
+Meanwhile that floating coffin had left its moorings and was gliding
+with the stream.  On the hatches sat Grandmaison, with Jolly and two
+other Marats, howling the "Carmagnole" to drown the cries of the
+wretches underneath, and beating time with their feet upon the deck.
+
+Leroy's teeth worked on like a rat's until at last the cord was
+severed.  Then, lest they should be parted in the general heaving
+and shifting of that human mass, those teeth of his fastened upon
+the Capuchin's sleeve.
+
+"Take hold of me!" he commanded as distinctly as he could; and the
+Capuchin gratefully obeyed.  "Now untie my wrists!"
+
+The Capuchin's hands slid along Leroy's arms until they found his
+hands, and there his fingers grew busy, groping at the knots.  It
+was no easy matter to untie them in the dark, guided by sense of
+touch alone.  But the friar was persistent and patient, and in the
+end the last knot ran loose, and our cocassier was unpinioned.
+
+It comforted him out of all proportion to the advantage.  At least
+his hands were free for any emergency that might offer.  That he
+depended in such a situation, and with no illusions as to what was
+to happen, upon emergency, shows how tenacious he was of hope.
+
+He had been released not a moment too soon.  Overhead, Grandmaison
+and his men were no longer singing.  They were moving about.
+Something bumped against the side of the vessel, near the bow,
+obviously a boat, and voices came up from below the level of the
+deck.  Then the lighter shuddered under a great blow upon the planks
+of the forecastle port.  The cries in the hold redoubled.  Panting,
+cursing, wailing men hurtled against Leroy, and almost crushed him
+for a moment under their weight as the vessel heaved to starboard.
+Came a succession of blows, not only on the port in the bow, but
+also on that astern.  There was a cracking and rending of timbers,
+and the water rushed in.
+
+Then the happenings in that black darkness became indescribably
+horrible.  In their frenzy not a few had torn themselves free of
+their bonds.  These hurled themselves towards the open ports through
+which the water was pouring.  They tore at the planks with desperate,
+lacerated hands.  Some got their arms through, seeking convulsively
+to widen the openings and so to gain an egress.  But outside in the
+shipwrights' boat stood Grandmaison, the fencing-master, brandishing
+a butcher's sword.
+
+With derision and foul objurgations he slashed at protruding arms
+and hands, thrust his sword again and again through the port into
+that close-packed, weltering mass, until at last the shipwrights
+backed away the boat to escape the suction of the sinking lighter.
+
+The vessel, with its doomed freight of a hundred and thirty human
+lives, settled down slowly by the head, and the wailing and cursing
+was suddenly silenced as the icy waters of the Loire eddied over it
+and raced on.
+
+Caught in the swirl of water, Leroy had been carried up against the
+deck of the lighter.  Instinctively he had clutched at a crossbeam.
+The water raced over his head, and then, to his surprise, receded,
+beat up once or twice as the lighter grounded, and finally settled
+on a level with his shoulders.
+
+He was quick to realize what had happened.  The lighter had gone
+down by the head on a shallow.  Her stern remained slightly
+protruding, so that in that part of her between the level of the
+water and the deck there was a clear space of perhaps a foot or a
+foot and a half.  Yet of the hundred and thirty doomed wretches on
+board he was the only one who had profited by this extraordinary
+chance.
+
+Leroy hung on there; and thereafter for two hours, to use his own
+expression, he floated upon corpses.  A man of less vigorous mettle,
+moral and physical, could never have withstood the ordeal of a two
+hours' immersion in the ice-cold water of that December morning.
+Leroy clung on, and hoped.  I have said that he was tenacious of
+hope.  And soon after daybreak he was justified of his confidence
+in his luck.  As the first livid gleams of light began to suffuse
+the water in which he floated, a creaking of rowlocks and a sound
+of voices reached his ears.  A boat was passing down the river.
+
+Leroy shouted, and his voice rang hollow and sepulchral on the
+morning stillness.  The creak of oars ceased abruptly.  He shouted
+again, and was answered.  The oars worked now at twice their former
+speed.  The boat was alongside.  Blows of a grapnel tore at the
+planking of the deck until there was a hole big enough to admit the
+passage of his body.
+
+He looked through the faint mist which he had feared never to see
+again, heaved himself up with what remained him of strength until
+his breast was on a level with the deck, and beheld two men in a
+boat.
+
+But, exhausted by the effort, his numbed limbs refused to support
+him.  He sank back, and went overhead, fearing now, indeed, that
+help had arrived too late.  But as he struggled to the surface the
+bight of a rope smacked the water within the hold.  Convulsively
+he clutched it, wound it about one arm, and bade them haul.
+
+Thus they dragged him out and aboard their own craft, and put him
+ashore at the nearest point willing out of humanity to do so much,
+but daring to do no more when he had told them how he came where
+they had found him.
+
+Half naked, numbed through and through, with chattering teeth and
+failing limbs, Leroy staggered into the guard-house at Chantenay.
+Soldiers of the Blues stripped him of his sodden rags, wrapped him
+in a blanket, thawed him outwardly before a fire and inwardly with
+gruel, and then invited him to give an account of himself.
+
+The story of the horse will have led you to suppose him a ready liar.
+He drew now upon that gift of his, represented himself as a mariner
+from Montoir, and told a harrowing tale of shipwreck.  Unfortunately,
+he overdid it.  There was present a fellow who knew something of the
+sea, and something of Montoir, to whom Leroy's tale did not ring
+quite true.  To rid themselves of responsibility, the soldiers
+carried him before the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes.
+
+Even here all might have gone well with him, since there was no
+member of that body with seacraft to penetrate his imposture.  But
+as ill-chance would have it, one of the members sitting that day
+was the black-mustached sans-culotte Jolly, the very man who had
+dragged Leroy out of his cell last night and tied him up.
+
+At sight of him Jolly's eyes bulged in his head.
+
+"Where the devil have you come from?" he greeted him thunderously.
+
+Leroy quailed.  Jolly's associates stared.  But Jolly explained to
+them:
+
+"He was of last night's bathing party.  And he has the impudence
+to come before us like this.  Take him away and shove him back into
+the water."
+
+But Bachelier, a man who, next to the President Goullin, exerted
+the greatest influence in the committee, was gifted with a sense
+of humour worthy of the Revolution.  He went off into peals of
+laughter as he surveyed the crestfallen cocassier, and, perhaps
+because Leroy's situation amused him, he was disposed to be humane.
+
+"No, no!" he said.  "Take him back to Le Bouffay for the present.
+Let the Tribunal deal with him."
+
+So back to Le Bouffay went Leroy, back to his dungeon, his fetid
+straw and his bread and water, there to be forgotten again, as he
+had been forgotten before, until Fate should need him.
+
+It is to him that we owe most of the materials from which we are
+able to reconstruct in detail that first of Carrier's drownings on
+a grand scale, conceived as an expeditious means of ridding the
+city of useless mouths, of easing the straitened circumstances
+resulting from misgovernment.
+
+Very soon it was followed by others, and, custom increasing Carrier's
+audacity, these drownings - there were in all some twenty-three
+noyades - ceased to be conducted in the secrecy of the night, or to
+be confined to men.  They were made presently to include women - of
+whom at one drowning alone, in Novose, three hundred perished under
+the most revolting circumstances - and even little children.  Carrier
+himself admitted that during the three months of his rule some three
+thousand victims visited the national bathing-place, whilst other,
+and no doubt more veracious, accounts treble that number of those
+who received the National Baptism.
+
+Soon these wholesale drownings had become an institution, a sort of
+national spectacle that Carrier and his committee felt themselves
+in duty bound to provide.
+
+But at length a point was reached beyond which it seemed difficult
+to continue them.  So expeditious was the measure, that soon the
+obvious material was exhausted.  The prisons were empty.  Yet habits,
+once contracted, are not easily relinquished.  Carrier would be
+looking elsewhere for material, and there was no saying where he
+might look, or who would be safe.  Soon the committee heard a rumour
+that the Representative intended to depose it and to appoint a new
+one, whereupon many of its members, who were conscious of
+lukewarmness, began to grow uneasy.
+
+Uneasy, too, became the members of the People's Society.  They had
+sent a deputation to Carrier with suggestions for the better conduct
+of the protracted campaign of La Vendee.  This was a sore point
+with the Representative.  He received the patriots with the foulest
+abuse, and had them flung downstairs by his secretaries.
+
+Into this atmosphere of general mistrust and apprehension came the
+most ridiculous Deus ex machina that ever was in the person of the
+very young and very rash Marc Antoine Jullien.  His father, the
+Deputy Jullien, was an intimate of Robespierre's, by whose influence
+Marc Antoine was appointed to the office of Agent of the Committee
+of Public Safety, and sent on a tour of inspection to report upon
+public feeling and the conduct of the Convention's Representatives.
+
+Arriving in Nantes at the end of January of '94, one of Marc
+Antoine's first visits happened to be to the People's Society,
+which was still quivering with rage at the indignities offered by
+Carrier to its deputation.
+
+Marc Antoine was shocked by what he heard, so shocked that instead
+of going to visit the Representative on the morrow, he spent the
+morning inditing a letter to Robespierre, in which he set forth in
+detail the abuses of which Carrier was guilty, and the deplorable
+state of misery in which he found the city of Nantes.
+
+That night, as Marc Antoine was sinking into the peaceful slumber
+of the man with duty done, he was rudely aroused by an officer and
+a couple of men of the National Guard, who announced to him that
+he was under arrest, and bade him rise and dress.
+
+Marc Antoine flounced out of bed in a temper, and flaunted his
+credentials.  The officer remained unmoved.  He was acting upon
+orders from the Citizen Representative.
+
+Still in a temper, Marc Antoine hurriedly dressed himself.  He would
+soon show this Representative that it is not safe to trifle with
+Agents of the Public Safety.  The Citizen Representative should hear
+from him.  The officer, still unimpressed, bundled him into a waiting
+carriage, and bore him away to the Maison Villetreux, on the island
+where Carrier had his residence.
+
+Carrier had gone to bed.  But he was awake, and he sat up promptly
+when the young muscadin from Paris was roughly thrust into his room
+by the soldiers.  The mere sight of the Representative sufficed to
+evaporate Marc Antoine's anger, and with it his courage.
+
+Carrier's pallor was of a grey-green from the rage that possessed
+him.  His black eyes smouldered like those of an animal seen in the
+gloom, and his tumbled black hair, fluttering about his moist brow,
+increased the terrific aspect of his countenance.  Marc Antoine
+shrank and was dumb.
+
+"So," said Carrier, regarding him steadily, terribly, "you are the
+thing that dares to denounce me to the Safety, that ventures to
+find fault with my work!"  From under his pillow he drew Marc
+Antoine's letter to Robespierre.  "Is this yours?"
+
+At the sight of this violation of his correspondence with the
+Incorruptible, Marc Antoine's indignation awoke, and revived his
+courage.
+
+"It is mine," he answered.  "By what right have you intercepted it?"
+
+"By what right?" Carrier put a leg out of bed.  "So you question
+my right, do you?  You have so imposed yourself upon folk that you
+are given powers, and you come here to air them, by "
+
+"You shall answer to the Citizen Robespierre for your conduct,"
+Marc Antoine threatened him.
+
+"Aha!"  Carrier revealed his teeth in a smile of ineffable
+wickedness.  He slipped from the bed, and crouching slightly as if
+about to spring, he pointed a lean finger at his captive.
+
+"You are of those with whom it is dangerous to deal publicly, and
+you presume upon that.  But you can be dealt with privily, and you
+shall.  I have you, and, by -- , you shall not escape me, you -- !"
+
+Marc Antoine looked into the Representative's face, and saw there
+the wickedness of his intent.  He stiffened.  Nature had endowed
+him with wits, and he used them now.
+
+"Citizen Carrier," he said, "I understand.  I am to be murdered
+to-night in the gloom and the silence.  But you shall perish after
+me in daylight, and amid the execrations of the people.  You may
+have intercepted my letters to my father and to Robespierre.  But
+if I do not leave Nantes, my father will come to ask an account of
+you, and you will end your life on the scaffold like the miserable
+assassin that you are."
+
+Of all that tirade, but one sentence had remained as if corroded
+into the mind of Carrier.  "My letters to my father and to
+Robespierre," the astute Marc Antoine had said.  And Marc Antoine
+saw the Representative's mouth loosen, saw a glint of fear replace
+the ferocity in his dark eyes.
+
+What Marc Antoine intended to suggest had instantly leapt to
+Carrier's mind - that there had been a second letter which his
+agents had missed.  They should pay for that.  But, meanwhile, if
+it were true, he dare not for his neck's sake go further in this
+matter.  He may have suspected that it was not true.  But he had
+no means of testing that suspicion.  Marc Antoine, you see, was
+subtle.
+
+"Your father?"growled the Representative.  "Who is your father?"
+
+"The Deputy Jullien."
+
+"What?"  Carrier straightened himself, affecting an immense
+astonishment.  "You are the son of the Deputy Julien?"  He burst
+into a laugh.  He came forward, holding out both his hands.  He
+could be subtle, too, you see.  "My friend, why did you not say
+so sooner?  See in what a ghastly mistake you have let me flounder.
+I imagined you - of course, it was foolish of me - to be a
+proscribed rascal from Angers, of the same name."
+
+He had fallen upon Marc Antoine's neck, and was embracing him.
+
+"Forgive me, my friend!" he besought him.  "Come and dine with me
+to-morrow, and we will laugh over it together."
+
+But Marc Antoine had no mind to dine with Carrier, although he
+promised to do so readily enough.  Back at his inn, scarce
+believing that he had got away alive, still sweating with terror
+at the very thought of his near escape, he packed his valise,
+and, by virtue of his commission, obtained post-horses at once.
+
+On the morrow from Angers, safe beyond the reach of Carrier, he
+wrote again to Robespierre, and this time also to his father.
+
+"In Nantes," he wrote, "I found the old regime in its worst form."
+He knew the jargon of Liberty, the tune that set the patriots
+a-dancing.  "Carrier's insolent secretaries emulate the intolerable
+haughtiness of a ci-devant minister's lackeys.  Carrier himself
+lives surrounded by luxury, pampered by women 'and parasites,
+keeping a harem and a court.  He tramples justice in the mud.  He
+has had all those who filled the prisons flung untried into the
+Loire.  The city of Nantes," he concluded, "needs saving.  The
+Vendean revolt must be suppressed, and Carrier the slayer of Liberty
+recalled."
+
+The letter had its effect, and Carrier was recalled to Paris, but
+not in disgrace.  Failing health was urged as the solicitous reason
+for his retirement from the arduous duties of governing Nantes.
+
+In the Convention his return made little stir, and even when early
+in the following July he learnt that Bourbotte, his successor at
+Nantes, had ordered the arrest of Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison,
+and his other friends of the committee, on the score of the
+drownings and the appropriation of national property confiscated
+from emigres, he remained calm, satisfied that his own position was
+unassailable.
+
+But the members of the Committee of Nantes were sent to Paris for
+trial, and their arrival there took place on that most memorable
+date in the annals of the Revolution, the 10th Thermidor (July 29,
+1794, O.S.), the day on which Robespierre fell and the floodgates
+of vengeance upon the terrorists were flung open.
+
+You have seen in the case of Marc Antoine Jullien how quick Carrier
+could be to take a cue.  In a coach he followed the tumbril that
+bore Robespierre to execution, radiant of countenance and shouting
+with the loudest, "Death to the traitor!"  On the morrow from the
+rostrum of the Convention, he passionately represented himself as
+a victim of the fallen tyrant, cleverly turning to his own credit
+the Marc Antoine affair, reminding the Convention how he had
+himself been denounced to Robespierre.  He was greeted with applause
+in that atmosphere of Thermidorean reaction.
+
+But Nemesis was stalking him relentlessly if silently.
+
+Among a batch of prisoners whom a chain of curious chances had
+brought from Nantes to Paris was our old friend Leroy the cocassier,
+required now as a witness against the members of the committee.
+
+Having acquainted the court with the grounds of his arrest, and the
+fact that for three years he had lain forgotten and without trial
+in the pestilential prison of Le Bouffay, Leroy passed on to a
+recital of his sufferings on that night of terror when he had gone
+down the Loire in the doomed lighter.  He told his tale with an
+artlessness that rendered it the more moving and convincing.  The
+audience crowding the chamber of justice shuddered with horror,
+and sobbed over the details of his torments, wept for joy over his
+miraculous preservation.  At the close he was applauded on all
+sides, which bewildered him a little, for he had never known
+anything but abuse in all his chequered life.
+
+And then, at the promptings of that spirit of reaction that was
+abroad in those days when France was awakening from the nightmare
+of terror, some one made there and then a collection on his behalf,
+and came to thrust into his hands a great bundle of assignats and
+bank bills, which to the humble cocassier represented almost a
+fortune.  It was his turn to weep.
+
+Then the crowd in the court which had heard his story shouted for
+the head of Carrier.  The demand was taken up by the whole of Paris,
+and finally his associates of the Convention handed him over to the
+Revolutionary Tribunal.
+
+He came before it on November 25th, and he could not find counsel
+to defend him.  Six advocates named in succession by the President
+refused to plead the cause of so inhuman a monster.  In a rage, at
+last Carrier announced that he would defend himself.  He did.
+
+He took the line that his business in Nantes had been chiefly
+concerned with provisioning the Army of the West; that he had had
+little to do with the policing of Nantes, which he left entirely to
+the Revolutionary Committee; and that he had no knowledge of the
+things said to have taken place.  But Goullin, Bachelier, and the
+others were there to fling back the accusation in their endeavours
+to save their own necks at the expense of his.
+
+He was sentenced on the very anniversary of that terrible night on
+which the men of the Marat Company broke into the prison of Le
+Bouffay, and he was accompanied in the tumbril by Grandmaison the
+pitiless, who was now filled with self-pity to such an extent that
+he wept bitterly.
+
+The crowd, which had hooted and insulted him from the Conciergerie
+to the Place de Greve, fell suddenly silent as he mounted the
+scaffold, his step firm, but his shoulders bowed, and his eyes upon
+the ground.
+
+Suddenly upon the silence, grotesquely, horribly merry, broke the
+sound of a clarinet playing the "Ca ira!"
+
+Jerking himself erect, Carrier turned and flung the last of his
+terrible glances at the musician.
+
+A moment later the knife fell with a thud, and a bleeding head
+rolled into the basket, the eyes still staring, but powerless now
+to inspire terror.
+
+Upon the general silence broke an echo of the stroke.
+
+"Vlan!" cried a voice.  "And there's a fine end to a great drowner!"
+
+It was Leroy the cocassier.  The crowd took up the cry.
+
+
+
+
+IX.   THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS
+
+CHARLES THE BOLD AND SAPPHIRA DANVELT
+
+
+When Philip the Good succumbed at Bruges of an apoplexy in the early
+part of the year 1467, the occasion was represented to the stout
+folk of Flanders as a favourable one to break the Burgundian yoke
+under which they laboured.  It was so represented by the agents of
+that astute king, Louis XI, who ever preferred guile to the direct
+and costly exertion of force.
+
+Charles, surnamed the Bold (le Temeraire), the new Duke of Burgundy,
+was of all the French King's enemies by far the most formidable and
+menacing just then; and the wily King, who knew better than to
+measure himself with a foe that was formidable, conceived a way to
+embarrass the Duke and cripple his resources at the very outset of
+his reign.  To this end did he send his agents into the Duke's Flemish
+dominions, there to intrigue with the powerful and to stir up the
+spirit of sedition that never did more than slumber in the hearts of
+those turbulent burghers.
+
+It was from the Belfry Tower of the populous, wealthy city of Ghent
+ - then one of the most populous and wealthy cities of Europe - that
+the call to arms first rang out, summoning the city's forty thousand
+weavers to quit their looms and take up weapons - the sword, the
+pike, and that arm so peculiarly Flemish, known as the goedendag.
+>From Ghent the fierce flame of revolt spread rapidly to the valley
+of the Meuse, and the scarcely less important city of Liege, where
+the powerful guilds of armourers and leather workers proved as ready
+for battle as the weavers of Ghent.
+
+They made a brave enough show until Charles the Bold came face to
+face with them at Saint-Trond, and smashed the mutinous burgher army
+into shards, leaving them in their slaughtered thousands upon the
+stricken field.
+
+The Duke was very angry.  He felt that the Flemings had sought to
+take a base advantage of him at a moment when it was supposed he
+would not be equal to protecting his interests, and he intended to
+brand it for all time upon their minds that it was not safe to take
+such liberties with their liege lord.  Thus, when a dozen of the
+most important burghers of Liege came out to him very humbly in
+their shirts, with halters round their necks, to kneel in the dust
+at his feet and offer him the keys of the city, he spurned the
+offer with angry disdain.
+
+"You shall be taught," he told them, "how little I require your
+keys, and I hope that you will remember the lesson for your own
+good."
+
+On the morrow his pioneers began to smash a breach, twenty fathoms
+wide, in one of the walls of the city, rolling the rubble into the
+ditch to fill it up at the spot.  When the operation was complete,
+Charles rode through the gap, as a conqueror, with vizor lowered
+and lance on thigh at the head of his Burgundians, into his city
+of Liege, whose fortifications he commanded should be permanently
+demolished.
+
+That was the end of the Flemish rising of 1467 against Duke Charles
+the Bold of Burgundy.  The weavers returned to their looms, the
+armourers to their forges, and the glove-makers and leather workers
+to their shears.  Peace was restored; and to see that it was kept,
+Charles appointed military governors of his confidence where he
+deemed them necessary.
+
+One of these was Claudius von Rhynsault, who had followed the Duke's
+fortunes for some years now, a born leader of men, a fellow of
+infinite address at arms and resource in battle, and of a bold,
+reckless courage that nothing could ever daunt.  It was perhaps this
+last quality that rendered him so esteemed of Charles, himself named
+the Bold, whose view of courage was that it was a virtue so lofty
+that in the nature of its possessor there could, perforce, be
+nothing mean.
+
+So now, to mark his esteem of this stalwart German, the Duke made
+him Governor of the province of Zeeland, and dispatched him thither
+to stamp out there any lingering sparks of revolt, and to rule it
+in his name as ducal lieutenant.
+
+Thus, upon a fair May morning, came Claud of Ryhnsault and his hardy
+riders to the town of Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, to take up
+his residence at the Gravenhof in the main square, and thence to
+dispense justice throughout that land of dykes in his master's
+princely name.  This justice the German captain dispensed with
+merciless rigour, conceiving that to be the proper way to uproot
+rebellious tendencies.  It was inevitable that he should follow such
+a course, impelled to it by a remorseless cruelty in his nature, of
+which the Duke his master had seen no hint, else he might have
+thought twice before making him Governor of Zeeland, for Charles
+ - despite his rigour when treachery was to be punished - was a just
+and humane prince.
+
+Now, amongst those arrested and flung into Middelburg gaol as a
+result of Rhynsault's ruthless perquisitions and inquisitions was
+a wealthy young burgher named Philip Danvelt.  His arrest was
+occasioned by a letter signed "Philip Danvelt" found in the house
+of a marked rebel who had been first tortured and then hanged.  The
+letter, of a date immediately preceding the late rising, promised
+assistance in the shape of arms and money.
+
+Brought before Rhynsault for examination, in a cheerless hall of
+the Gravenhof, Danvelt's defence was a denial upon oath that he had
+ever taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion.  Told of
+the letter found, and of the date it bore, he laughed.  That letter
+made everything very simple and clear.  At the date it bore he had
+been away at Flushing marrying a wife, whom he had since brought
+thence to Middelburg.  It was ludicrous, he urged, to suppose that
+in such a season - of all seasons in a man's life - he should have
+been concerned with rebellion or correspondence with rebels, and,
+urging this, he laughed again.
+
+Now, the German captain did not like burghers who laughed in his
+presence.  It argued a lack of proper awe for the dignity of his
+office and the importance of his person.  From his high seat at
+the Judgment-board, flanked by clerks and hedged about by
+men-at-arms, he scowled upon the flaxen-haired, fresh-complexioned
+young burgher who bore himself so very easily.  He was a big,
+handsome man, this Rhynsault, of perhaps some thirty years of age.
+His thick hair was of a reddish brown, and his beardless face was
+cast in bold lines and tanned by exposure to the colour of mahogany,
+save where the pale line of a scar crossed his left cheek.
+
+"Yet, I tell you, the letter bears your signature," he grumbled
+sourly.
+
+"My name, perhaps," smiled the amiable Danvelt, "but assuredly not
+my signature."
+
+"Herrgott!" swore the German captain.  "Is this a riddle?  What is
+the difference?"
+
+Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be
+mildly insolent.
+
+"It is a riddle that the meanest of your clerks there can read for
+you," said he.
+
+The Governor's blue eyes gleamed like steel as they, fastened upon
+Danvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull
+flush crept into his cheeks.  Then he swore.
+
+"Beim blute Gottes!" quoth he, "do you whet your trader's wit upon
+me, scum?"
+
+And to the waiting men-at-arms:
+
+"Take him back to his dungeon," he commanded, "that in its quiet
+he may study a proper carriage before he is next brought before us."
+
+Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pertness
+and to reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault,
+it was not only the guilty who had need to go warily.
+
+The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt.  His secretary, on
+his immediate right, leaned towards him.
+
+"It were easy to test the truth of the man's assertion," said he.
+"Let his servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when
+he was in Flushing and when married."
+
+"Aye," growled von Rhynsault.  "Let it be done.  I don't doubt we
+shall discover that the dog was lying."
+
+But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt's
+household and his wife stood before the Governor to answer his
+questions.  Their replies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had
+told, and appeared in other ways to place it beyond all doubt that
+he had taken no part, in deed or even in thought, in the rebellion
+against the Duke of Burgundy.  His wife protested it solemnly and
+piteously.
+
+"To this I can swear, my lord," she concluded.  "I am sure no
+evidence can be brought against him, who was ever loyal and ever
+concerned with his affairs and with me at the time in question.
+My lord" - she held out her hands towards the grim German, and her
+lovely eyes gleamed with unshed tears of supplication - "I implore
+you to believe me, and in default of witnesses against him to
+restore my husband to me."
+
+Rhynsault's blue eyes kindled now as they considered her, and his
+full red lips slowly parted in the faintest and most inscrutable
+of smiles.  She was very fair to look upon - of middle height and
+most exquisite shape.  Her gown, of palest saffron, edged with fur,
+high-waisted according to the mode, and fitted closely to the
+gently swelling bust, was cut low to display the white perfection
+of her neck.  Her softly rounded face looked absurdly childlike
+under the tall-crowned hennin, from which a wispy veil floated
+behind her as she moved.
+
+In silence, then, for a spell, the German mercenary pondered her
+with those slowly kindling eyes, that slowly spreading, indefinite
+smile.  Then he stirred, and to his secretary he muttered shortly:
+
+"The woman lies.  In private I may snare the truth from her."
+
+He rose - a tall, massively imposing figure in a low-girdled tunic
+of deep purple velvet, open at the breast, and gold-laced across a
+white silken undervest.
+
+"There is some evidence," he informed her gruffly.  "Come with me,
+and you shall see it for yourself."
+
+He led the way from that cheerless hall by a dark corridor to a
+small snug room, richly hung and carpeted, where a servant waited.
+He dismissed the fellow, and in the same breath bade her enter,
+watching her the while from under lowered brows.  One of her women
+had followed; but admittance was denied her.  Danvelt's wife must
+enter his room alone.
+
+Whilst she waited there, with scared eyes and fluttering bosom, he
+went to take from an oaken coffer the letter signed "Philip Danvelt."
+He folded the sheet so that the name only was to be read, and came
+to thrust it under her eyes.
+
+"What name is that?" he asked her gruffly.
+
+Her answer was very prompt.
+
+"It is my husband's, but not the writing - it is another hand; some
+other Philip Danvelt; there will be others in Zeeland."
+
+He laughed softly, looking at her ever with that odd intentness,
+and under his gaze she shrank and cowered in terror; it spoke to her
+of some nameless evil; the tepid air of the luxurious room was
+stifling her.
+
+"If I believed you, your husband would be delivered from his prison
+ - from all danger; and he stands, I swear to you, in mortal peril."
+
+"Ah, but you must believe me.  There are others who can bear witness."
+
+"I care naught for others," he broke in, with harsh and arrogant
+contempt.  Then he softened his voice to a lover's key.  "But I might
+accept your word that this is not your husband's hand, even though
+I did not believe you."
+
+She did not understand, and so she could only stare at him with those
+round, brown eyes of hers dilating, her lovely cheeks blanching with
+horrid fear.
+
+"Why, see," he said at length, with an easy, gruff good-humour, "I
+place the life of Philip Danvelt in those fair hands to do with as
+you please.  Surely, sweeting, you will not be so unkind as to
+destroy it."
+
+And as he spoke his face bent nearer to her own, his flaming eyes
+devoured her, and his arm slipped softly, snake-like round her to
+draw her to him.  But before it had closed its grip she had started
+away, springing back in horror, an outcry already on her pale lips.
+
+"One word," he admonished her sharply, "and it speaks your husband's
+doom!"
+
+"Oh, let me go, let me go!" she cried in anguish.
+
+"And leave your husband in the hangman's hands?" he asked.
+
+"Let me go!  Let me go!" was all that she could answer him,
+expressing the only thought of which in that dread moment her mind
+was capable.
+
+That and the loathing on her face wounded his vanity for this beast
+was vain.  His manner changed, and the abysmal brute in him was
+revealed in the anger he displayed.  With foul imprecations he drove
+her out.
+
+Next day a messenger from the Governor waited upon her at her house
+with a brief note to inform her that her husband would be hanged
+upon the morrow.  Incredulity was succeeded by a numb, stony,
+dry-eyed grief, in which she sat alone for hours - a woman entranced.
+At last, towards dusk, she summoned a couple of her grooms to
+attend and light her, and made her way, ever in that odd
+somnambulistic state, to the gaol of Middelburg.  She announced
+herself to the head gaoler as the wife of Philip Danvelt, lying
+under sentence of death, and that she was come to take her last
+leave of him.  It was not a thing to be denied, nor had the gaoler
+any orders to deny it.
+
+So she was ushered into the dank cell where Philip waited for his
+doom, and by the yellow wheel of light of the lantern that hung
+from the shallow vaulted ceiling she beheld the ghastly change
+that the news of impending death had wrought in him.  No longer
+was he the self-assured young burgher who, conscious of his
+innocence and worldly importance, had used a certain careless
+insolence with the Governor of Zeeland.  Here she beheld a man of
+livid and distorted face, wild-eyed, his hair and garments in
+disarray, suggesting the physical convulsions to which he had
+yielded in his despair and rage.
+
+"Sapphira!" he cried at sight of her.  A sigh of anguish and he
+flung himself, shuddering and sobbing, upon her breast.  She put
+her arms about him, soothed him gently, and drew him back to the
+wooden chair from which he had leapt to greet her.
+
+He took his head in his hands and poured out the fierce anguish of
+his soul.  To die innocent as he was, to be the victim of an
+arbitrary, unjust power!  And to perish at his age!
+
+Hearing him rave, she shivered out of an agony of compassion and
+also of some terror for herself.  She would that he found it less
+hard to die.  And thinking this she thought further, and uttered
+some of her thought aloud.
+
+"I could have saved you, my poor Philip."
+
+He started up, and showed her again that livid, distorted face of
+his.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely.  "You could have saved me,
+do you say?  Then - then why - "
+
+"Ah, but the price, my dear," she sobbed.
+
+"Price?" quoth he in sudden, fierce contempt.  "What price is too
+great to pay for life?  Does this Rhynsault want all our wealth,
+then yield it to him yield it so that I may live - "
+
+"Should I have hesitated had it been but that?" she interrupted.
+
+And then she told him, whilst he sat there hunched and shuddering.
+
+"The dog! The foul German dog!" he muttered through clenched teeth.
+
+"So that you see, my dear," she pursued brokenly, "it was too great
+a price.  Yourself, you could not have condoned it, or done aught
+else but loathe me afterwards."
+
+But he was not as stout-mettled as she deemed him, or else the
+all-consuming thirst of life, youth's stark horror of death, made
+him a temporizing craven in that hour.
+
+"Who knows?" he answered.  "Certes, I do not.  But a thing so done,
+a thing in which the will and mind have no part, resolves itself
+perhaps into a sacrifice - "
+
+He broke off there, perhaps from very shame.  After all he was a
+man, and there are limits to what manhood will permit of one.
+
+But those words of his sank deeply into her soul.  They rang again
+and again in her ears as she took her anguished way home after the
+agony of their farewells, and in the end they drove her out again
+that very night to seek the Governor of Zeeland.
+
+Rhynsault was at supper when she came, and without quitting the
+table bade them usher her into his presence.  He found her very
+white, but singularly calm and purposeful in her bearing.
+
+"Well, mistress?"
+
+"May I speak to you alone?"
+
+Her voice was as steady as her glance.
+
+He waved away the attendants, drank a deep draught from the cup at
+his elbow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sat back
+in his tall chair to hear her.
+
+"Yesterday," she said, "you made, or seemed to make, me a proposal."
+
+He looked up at first in surprise, then with a faint smile on his
+coarse, red mouth.  His glance had read her meaning clearly.
+
+"Look you, mistress, here I am lord of life and death.  Yet in the
+case of your husband I yield up that power to you.  Say but the word
+and I sign the order for his gaol delivery at dawn."
+
+"I have come to say that word," she informed him.
+
+A moment he looked up at her, his smile broadening, a flush mounting
+to his cheek-bones.  Then he rose and sent his chair crashing behind
+him to the ground.
+
+"Herrgott!" he grunted; and he gathered her slim, trembling body to
+his massive gold-laced breast.
+
+
+Soon after sunrise on the morrow she was beating at the gates of
+Middelburg gaol, a paper clutched convulsively in her left hand.
+
+She was admitted, and to the head gaoler she showed the paper that
+she carried.
+
+"An order from the Governor of Zeeland for the gaol delivery of
+Philip Danvelt!" she announced almost hysterically.
+
+The gaoler scanned the paper, then her face.  His lips tightened.
+
+"Come this way," he said; and led her down a gloomy corridor to the
+cell where yesterday she had seen her husband.
+
+He threw wide the door, and Sapphira sprang in.
+
+"Philip!" she cried, and checked as suddenly.
+
+He lay supine and still upon the miserable pallet, his hands folded
+upon his breast, his face waxen, his eyes staring glassily through
+half-closed lids.
+
+She sped to his side in a sudden chill of terror.  She fell on her
+knees and touched him.
+
+"Dead!" she screamed, and, kneeling, span round questioning to face
+the gaoler in the doorway.  "Dead!"
+
+"He was hanged at daybreak, mistress," said the gaoler gently.
+
+She rocked a moment, moaning, then fell suddenly forward across her
+husband's body in a swoon.
+
+That evening she was again at the Gravenhof to see Rhynsault, and
+again she was admitted - a haggard faced woman now, in whom there
+was no trace of beauty left.  She came to stand before the Governor,
+considered him in silence a moment with a loathing unutterable in
+her glance, then launched into fierce recriminations of his broken
+faith.
+
+He heard her out, then shrugged and smiled indulgently.
+
+"I performed no less than I promised," said he.  "I pledged my word
+to Danvelt's gaol delivery, and was not my gaol delivery effective?
+You could hardly suppose that I should allow it to be of such a
+fashion as to interfere with our future happy meetings."
+
+Before his leering glance she fled in terror, followed by the sound
+of his bestial laugh.
+
+For a week thereafter she kept her house and brooded.  Then one day
+she sallied forth all dressed in deepest mourning and attended by a
+train of servants, and, embarking upon a flat-bottomed barge, was
+borne up the river Scheldt towards Antwerp.  Bruges was her ultimate
+destination, of which she left no word behind her, and took the
+longest way round to reach it.  From Antwerp her barge voyaged on
+to Ghent, and thence by canal, drawn by four stout Flemish horses,
+at last to the magnificent city where the Dukes of Burgundy kept
+their Court.
+
+
+Under the June sunshine the opulent city of Bruges hummed with
+activity like the great human hive it was.  For Bruges at this date
+was the market of the world, the very centre of the world's commerce,
+the cosmopolis of the age.  Within its walls were established the
+agencies of a score of foreign great trading companies, and the
+ambassadors of no less a number of foreign Powers.  Here on a day
+you might hear every language of civilization spoken in the broad
+thoroughfares under the shadow of such imposing buildings as you
+would not have found together in another city of Europe.  To the
+harbour came the richly laden argosies from Venice and Genoa, from
+Germany and the Baltic, from Constantinople and from England, and
+in her thronged markets Lombard and Venetian, Levantine, Teuton,
+and Saxon stood jostling one another to buy and sell.
+
+It was past noon, and the great belfry above the Gothic Cloth Hall
+in the Grande Place was casting a lengthening shadow athwart the
+crowded square.  Above the Babel of voices sounded on a sudden the
+note of a horn, and there was a cry of "The Duke!  The Duke!"
+followed by a general scuttle of the multitude to leave a clear way
+down the middle of the great square.
+
+A gorgeous cavalcade some twoscore strong came into sight, advancing
+at an amble, a ducal hunting party returning to the palace.  A hush
+fell upon the burgher crowd as it pressed back respectfully to gaze;
+and to the din of human voices succeeded now the clatter of hoofs
+upon the kidney-stones of the square, the jangle of hawkbells, the
+baying of hounds, and the occasional note of the horn that had
+first brought warning of the Duke's approach.
+
+It was a splendid iridescent company, flaunting in its apparel
+every colour of the prism.  There were great lords in silks and
+velvets of every hue, their legs encased in the finest skins of
+Spain; there were great ladies, in tall, pointed hennins or bicorne
+headdresses and floating veils, with embroidered gowns that swept
+down below the bellies of their richly harnessed palfreys.  And
+along the flanks of this cavalcade ran grooms and huntsmen in
+green and leather, their jagged liripipes flung about their necks,
+leading the leashed hounds.
+
+The burghers craned their necks, and Levantine merchant argued with
+Lombard trader upon an estimate of the wealth paraded thus before
+them.  And then at last came the young Duke himself, in black, as
+if to detach himself from the surrounding splendour.  He was of
+middle stature, of a strong and supple build, with a lean, swarthy
+face and lively eyes.  Beside him, on a white horse, rode a
+dazzling youth dressed from head to foot in flame-coloured silk,
+a peaked bonnet of black velvet set upon his lovely golden head,
+a hooded falcon perched upon his left wrist, a tiny lute slung
+behind him by a black ribbon.  He laughed as he rode, looking the
+very incarnation of youth and gaiety.
+
+The cavalcade passed slowly towards the Prinssenhof, the ducal
+residence.  It had all but crossed the square when suddenly a voice
+ - a woman's voice, high and tense - rang out.
+
+"Justice, my Lord Duke of Burgundy! Justice, Lord Duke, for a
+woman's wrongs!"
+
+It startled the courtly riders, and for a moment chilled their
+gaiety.  The scarlet youth at the Duke's side swung round in his
+saddle to obtain a view of her who called so piteously, and he
+beheld Sapphira Danvelt.
+
+She was all in black, and black was the veil that hung from her
+steeple head-dress, throwing into greater relief her pallid
+loveliness which the youth's glance was quick to appraise.  He saw,
+too, from her air and from the grooms attending her, that she was
+a woman of some quality, and the tragic appeal of her smote home
+in his gay, poetic soul.  He put forth a hand and clutched the
+Duke's arm, and, as if yielding to this, the Duke reined up.
+
+"What is it that you seek?" Charles asked her not unkindly, his
+lively dark eyes playing over her.
+
+"Justice!" was all she answered him very piteously, and yet with
+a certain fierceness of insistence.
+
+"None asks it of me in vain, I hope," he answered gravely.  "But I
+do not dispense it from the saddle in the public street.  Follow us."
+
+And he rode on.
+
+She followed to the Prinssenhof with her grooms and her woman
+Catherine.  There she was made to wait in a great hall, thronged
+with grooms and men-at-arms and huntsmen, who were draining the
+measure sent them by the Duke.  She stood apart, wrapped in her
+tragic sorrow, and none molested her.  At last a chamberlain came
+to summon her to the Duke's presence.
+
+In a spacious, sparsely furnished room she found the Duke awaiting
+her, wearing now a gown of black and gold that was trimmed with
+rich fur.  He sat in a tall chair of oak and leather, and leaning
+on the back of it lounged gracefully the lovely scarlet youth who
+had ridden at his side.
+
+Standing before him, with drooping eyes and folded hands, she told
+her shameful story.  Darker and darker grew his brow as she proceeded
+with it.  But it was the gloom of doubt rather than of anger.
+
+"Rhynsault?" he cried when she had done.  "Rhynsault did this?"
+
+There was incredulity in his voice and nothing else.
+
+The youth behind him laughed softly, and shifted his attitude.
+
+"You are surprised.  Yet what else was to be looked for in that
+Teuton swine?  Me he never could deceive, for all his - "
+
+"Be silent, Arnault," said the Duke sharply.  And to the woman: "It
+is a grave, grave charge," he said, "against a man I trusted and
+have esteemed, else I should not have placed him where he is.  What
+proof have you?"
+
+She proffered him a strip of parchment - the signed order for the
+gaol delivery of Philip Danvelt.
+
+"The gaoler of Middelburg will tell Your Grace that he was hanged
+already when I presented this.  My woman Catherine, whom I have
+with me, can testify to part.  And there are some other servants
+who can bear witness to my husband's innocence.  Captain von
+Rhynsault had ceased to doubt it."
+
+He studied the parchment, and fell very grave and thoughtful.
+
+"Where are you lodged?" he asked.
+
+She told him.
+
+"Wait there until I send for you again," he bade her.  "Leave this
+order with me, and depend upon it, justice shall be done."
+
+That evening, a messenger rode out to Middelburg to summon von
+Rhynsault to Bruges, and the arrogant German came promptly and
+confidently, knowing nothing of the reason, but conceiving naturally
+that fresh honours were to be conferred upon him by a master who
+loved stout-hearted servants.  And that Rhynsault was stout-hearted
+he showed most of all when the Duke taxed him without warning with
+the villainy he had wrought.
+
+If he was surprised, he was not startled.  What was the life of a
+Flemish burgher more or less?  What the honour of a Flemish wife?
+These were not considerations to daunt a soldier, a valiant man of
+war.  And because such was his dull mood - for he was dull, this
+Rhynsault, as dull as he was brutish - he considered his sin too
+venial to be denied.  And the Duke, who could be crafty, perceiving
+that mood of his, and simulating almost an approval of it, drew the
+German captain into self-betrayal.
+
+"And so this Philip Danvelt may have been innocent?"
+
+"He must have been, for we have since taken the guilty man of the
+same name," said the German easily.  "It was unfortunate, but - "
+
+"Unfortunate!"  The Duke's manner changed from silk to steel.  He
+heaved himself out of his chair, and his dark eyes flamed.
+"Unfortunate!  Is that all, you dog?"
+
+"I conceived him guilty when I ordered him to be hanged," spluttered
+the captain, greatly taken aback.
+
+"Then, why this?  Answer me - why this?"
+
+And under his nose the Duke thrust the order of gaol delivery
+Rhynsault had signed.
+
+The captain blenched, and fear entered his glance.  The thing was
+becoming serious, it seemed.
+
+"Is this the sort of justice you were sent to Middelburg to
+administer in my name?  Is this how you dishonour me?  If you
+conceived him guilty, why did you sign this and upon what terms?
+Bah, I know the terms.  And having made such foul terms, why did
+you not keep your part of the bargain, evil as it was?"
+
+Rhynsault had nothing to say.  He was afraid, and he was angry too.
+Here was a most unreasonable bother all about nothing, it seemed
+to him.
+
+"I - I sought to compromise between justice and - and - "
+
+"And your own vile ends," the Duke concluded for him.  "By Heaven,
+you German dog, I think I'll have you shortened by a head!"
+
+"My lord!" It was a cry of protest.
+
+"There is the woman you have so foully wronged, and so foully
+swindled," said the Duke, watching him.  "What reparation will you
+make to her?  What reparation can you make?  I can toss your filthy
+head into her lap.  But will that repair the wrong?"
+
+The captain suddenly saw light, and quite a pleasant light it was,
+for he had found Sapphira most delectable.
+
+"Why," he said slowly, and with all a fool's audacity, "having made
+her a widow, I can make her a wife again.  I never thought to wive,
+myself.  But if Your Grace thinks such reparation adequate, I will
+afford it her."
+
+The Duke checked in the very act of replying.  Again the expression
+of his countenance changed.  He strode away, his head bowed in
+thought; then slowly he returned.
+
+"Be it so," he said.  "It is not much, but it is all that you can do,
+and after a fashion it will mend the honour you have torn.  See that
+you wed her within the week.  Should she not consent, it will be the
+worse for you."
+
+She would not have consented - she would have preferred death,
+indeed - but for the insistence that the Duke used in private with
+her.  And so, half convinced that it would in some sort repair her
+honour, the poor woman suffered herself to be led, more dead than
+living, to the altar in the Duke's private chapel, and there,
+scarcely knowing what she did, she became the wife of Captain
+Claudius von Rhynsault, the man she had most cause to loathe and
+hate in all the world.
+
+Rhynsault had ordered a great banquet to celebrate his nuptials,
+for on the whole he was well satisfied with the issue of this
+affair.  But as he left the altar, his half-swooning bride upon
+his arm, the Duke in person tapped his shoulder.
+
+"All is not yet done," he said.  "You are to come with me."
+
+The bridal pair were conducted to the great hall of the Prinssenhof,
+where there was a great gathering of the Court - to do honour to
+his nuptials, thought the German captain.  At the broad table sat
+two clerkly fellows with quills and parchments, and by this table
+the Duke took his stand, Arnault beside him - in peacock-blue
+to-day - and called for silence.
+
+"Captain von Rhynsault," he said gravely and quietly, "what you have
+done is well done; but it does not suffice.  In the circumstances
+of this marriage, and after the revelation we have had of your ways
+of thought and of honour, it is necessary to make provision against
+the future.  It shall not be yours, save at grave cost, to repudiate
+the wife you have now taken."
+
+"There is no such intent - " began Rhynsault, who misliked this homily.
+
+The Duke waved him into silence.
+
+"You are interrupting me," he said sharply.  "You are a wealthy man,
+Rhynsault, thanks to the favours I have heaped upon you ever since
+the day when I picked you from your German kennel to set you where
+you stand.  Here you will find a deed prepared.  It is in the form
+of a will, whereby you bequeath everything of which you are to-day
+possessed - and it is all set down - to your wife on your death, or
+on the day on which you put her from you.  Your signature is
+required to that."
+
+The captain hesitated a moment.  This deed would fetter all his
+future.  The Duke was unreasonable.  But under the steady, compelling
+eyes of Charles he moved forward to the table, and accepted the quill
+the clerk was proffering.  There was no alternative, he realized.
+He was trapped.  Well, well!  He must make the best of it.  He
+stooped from his great height, and signed in his great sprawling,
+clumsy, soldier's hand.
+
+The clerk dusted the document with pounce, and handed it to the Duke.
+Charles cast an eye upon the signature, then taking the quill
+himself, signed under it, then bore the document to the half-swooning
+bride.
+
+"Keep this secure," he bade her.  "It is your marriage-gift from me."
+
+Rhynsault's eyes gleamed.  If his wife were to keep the deed, the
+thing was none so desperate after all.  But the next moment he had
+other things to think of.
+
+"Give me your sword," the Duke requested.
+
+Wondering, the German unsheathed the weapon, and proffered the hilt
+to his master.  Charles took it, and a stern smile played about his
+beardless mouth.  He grasped it, hilt in one hand and point in the
+other.  Suddenly he bent his right knee, and, bearing sharply
+downward with the flat of the weapon upon his thigh, snapped in into
+two.
+
+"So much for that dishonourable blade," he said, and cast the pieces
+from him.  Then he flung out an arm to point to Rhynsault.  "Take
+him out," he commanded; "let him have a priest, and half an hour in
+which to make his soul, then set his head on a spear above the Cloth
+Hall, that men may know the justice of Charles of Burgundy."
+
+With the roar of a 'goaded bull the German attempted to fling
+forward.  But men-at-arms, in steel and leather, who had come up
+quietly behind him, seized him now.  Impotent in their coiling arms,
+he was borne away to his doom, that thereby he might complete the
+reparation of his hideous offence, and deliver Sapphira from the
+bondage of a wedlock which Charles of Burgundy had never intended
+her to endure.
+
+
+
+
+X.  THE NIGHT OF STRANGLERS
+
+GOVANNA OF NAPLES AND ANDREAS OF HUNGARY
+
+
+Charles, Duke of Durazzo, was one of your super chess-players,
+handling kings and queens, knights and prelates of flesh and blood
+in the game that he played with Destiny upon the dark board of
+Neapolitan politics.  And he had no illusions on the score of the
+forfeit that would be claimed by his grim opponent in the event of
+his own defeat.  He knew that his head was the stake he set upon
+the board, and he knew, too, that defeat must inevitably follow
+upon a single false move.  Yet he played boldly and craftily, as
+you shall judge.
+
+He made his first move in March of 1343, some three months after
+the death of Robert of Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, as ran
+the title of the ruler of Naples.  He found his opportunity amid
+the appalling anarchy into which the kingdom was then plunged as a
+result of a wrong and an ill judged attempt to right it.
+
+Good King Robert the Wise had wrested the crown of Naples from his
+elder brother, the King of Hungary, and had ruled as a usurper.
+Perhaps to quiet his conscience, perhaps to ensure against future
+strife between his own and his brother's descendants, he had
+attempted to right the wrong by a marriage between his brother's
+grandson Andreas and his own granddaughter Giovanna, a marriage
+which had taken place ten years before, when Andreas was but seven
+years of age and Giovanna five.
+
+The aim had been thus to weld into one the two branches of the House
+of Anjou.  Instead, the rivalry was to be rendered more acute than
+ever, and King Robert's fear of some such result contributed to it
+not a little.  On his deathbed he summoned the Princes of the Blood
+ - the members of the Houses of Durazzo and Taranto - and the chief
+nobles of the kingdom, demanding of them an oath of allegiance to
+Giovanna, and himself appointing a Council of Regency to govern the
+kingdom during her minority.
+
+The consequence was that, against all that had been intended when
+the marriage was contracted, Giovanna was now proclaimed queen in
+her own right, and the government taken over in her name by the
+appointed Council.  Instantly the Court of Naples was divided into
+two camps, the party of the Queen, including the Neapolitan nobility,
+and the party of Andreas of Hungary, consisting of the Hungarian
+nobles forming his train and a few malcontent Neapolitan barons, and
+guided by the sinister figure of Andreas's preceptor, Friar Robert.
+
+This arrogant friar, of whom Petrarch has left us a vivid portrait,
+a red-faced, red-bearded man, with a fringe of red hair about his
+tonsure, short and squat of figure, dirty in his dress and habits,
+yet imbued with the pride of Lucifer despite his rags, thrust
+himself violently into the Council of Regency, demanding a voice in
+the name of his pupil Andreas.  And the Council feared him, not
+only on the score of his over-bearing personality, but also because
+he was supported by the populace, which had accepted his general
+filthiness as the outward sign of holiness.  His irruption occasioned
+so much trouble and confusion that in the end the Pope intervened,
+in his quality as Lord Paramount - Naples being a fief of Holy
+Church - and appointed a legate to rule the kingdom during
+Giovanna's minority.
+
+The Hungarians, with Andreas's brother, King Ludwig of Hungary, at
+their head, now appealed to the Papal Court of Avignon for a Bull
+commanding the joint coronation of Andreas and Giovanna, which
+would be tantamount to placing the government in the hands of
+Andreas.  The Neapolitans, headed by the Princes of the Blood - who,
+standing next in succession, had also their own interests to consider
+clamoured that Giovanna alone should be crowned.
+
+In this pass were the affairs of the kingdom when Charles of Durazzo,
+who had stood watchful and aloof, carefully weighing the chances,
+resolved at last to play that dangerous game of his.  He began by
+the secret abduction of Maria of Anjou, his own cousin and Giovanna's
+sister, a child of fourteen.  He kept her concealed for a month in
+his palace, what time he obtained from the Pope, through the good
+offices of his uncle the Cardinal of Perigord, a dispensation to
+overcome the barrier of consanguinity.  That dispensation obtained,
+Charles married the girl publicly under the eyes of all Naples,
+and by the marriage - to which the bride seemed nowise unwilling
+ - became, by virtue of his wife, next heir to the crown of Naples.
+
+That was his opening move.  His next was to write to his obliging
+uncle the Cardinal of Perigord, whose influence at Avignon was very
+considerable, urging him to prevail upon Pope Clement VI not to
+sign the Bull in favour of Andreas and the joint coronation.
+
+Now, the high-handed action of Charles in marrying Maria of Anjou
+had very naturally disposed Giovanna against him; further, it had
+disposed against him those Princes of the Blood who were next in
+the succession, and upon whom he had stolen a march by this
+strengthening of his own claims.  It is inevitable to assume that
+he had counted precisely upon this to afford him the pretext that
+he sought - he, a Neapolitan prince - to ally himself with the
+Hungarian intruder.
+
+Under any other circumstances his advances must have been viewed
+with suspicion by Andreas, and still more by the crafty Friar
+Robert.  But, under the circumstances which his guile had created,
+he was received with open arms by the Hungarian party, and his
+defection from the Court of Giovanna was counted a victory by the
+supporters of Andreas.  He protested his good-will towards Andreas,
+and proclaimed his hatred of Giovanna's partisans, who poisoned her
+mind against her husband.  He hunted and drank with Andreas - whose
+life seems to have been largely made up of hunting and drinking -
+and pandered generally to the rather gross tastes of this foreigner,
+whom in his heart he despised for a barbarian.
+
+>From being a boon companion, Charles very soon became a counsellor
+to the young Prince, and the poisonous advice that he gave seemed
+shrewd and good, even to Friar Robert.
+
+"Meet hostility with hostility, ride ruthlessly upon your own way,
+showing yourself confident of the decision in your favour that the
+Pope must ultimately give.  For bear ever in your mind that you are
+King of Naples, not by virtue of your marriage with Giovanna, but
+in your own right, Giovanna being but the offspring of the usurping
+branch."
+
+The pale bovine eyes of Andreas would kindle into something like
+intelligence, and a flush would warm his stolid countenance.  He
+was a fair-haired young giant, white-skinned and well-featured, but
+dull, looking, with cold, hard eyes suggesting the barbarian that
+he was considered by the cultured Neapolitans, and that he certainly
+looked by contrast with them.  Friar Robert supporting the Duke of
+Durazzo's advice, Andreas did not hesitate to act upon it; of his
+own authority he delivered prisoners from gaol, showered honours
+upon his Hungarian followers and upon such Neapolitan barons as
+Count Altamura, who was ill-viewed at Court, and generally set the
+Queen at defiance.  The inevitable result, upon which again the
+subtle Charles had counted, was to exasperate a group of her most
+prominent nobles into plotting the ruin of Andreas.
+
+It was a good beginning, and unfortunately Giovanna's own behaviour
+afforded Charles the means of further speeding up his game.
+
+The young Queen was under the governance of Filippa the Catanese,
+an evil woman, greedy of power.  This Filippa, once a washerwoman,
+had in her youth been chosen for her splendid health to be the
+foster-mother of Giovanna's father.  Beloved of her foster-child,
+she had become perpetually installed at Court, married to a wealthy
+Moor named Cabane, who was raised to the dignity of Grand Seneschal
+of the kingdom, whereby the sometime washerwoman found herself
+elevated to the rank of one of the first ladies of Naples.  She must
+have known how to adapt herself to her new circumstances, otherwise
+she would hardly have been appointed, as she was upon the death of
+her foster-son, governess to his infant daughters.  Later, to ensure
+her hold upon the young Queen, and being utterly unscrupulous in her
+greed of power, she had herself contrived that her son, Robert of
+Cabane, became Giovanna's lover.
+
+One of Giovanna's first acts upon her grandfather's death had been
+to create this Robert Count of Evoli, and this notwithstanding that
+in the mean time he had been succeeded in her favour by the handsome
+young Bertrand d'Artois.  This was the group - the Catanese, her
+son, and Bertrand - that, with the Princes of the Blood, governed
+the Queen's party.
+
+With what eyes Andreas may have looked upon all this we have no
+means of determining.  Possibly, engrossed as he was with his hawks
+and his hounds, he may have been stupidly blind to his own dishonour,
+at least as far as Bertrand was concerned.  Another than Charles
+might have chosen the crude course of opening his eyes to it.  But
+Charles was too far-seeing.  Precipitancy was not one of his faults.
+His next move must be dictated by the decision of Avignon regarding
+the coronation.
+
+This decision came in July of 1345, and it fell like a thunderbolt
+upon the Court.  The Pope had pronounced in favour of Andreas by
+granting the Bull for the joint coronation of Andreas and Giovanna.
+
+This was check to Charles.  His uncle the Cardinal of Perigord had
+done his utmost to oppose the measure, but he had been overborne in
+the end by Ludwig of Hungary, who had settled the matter by the
+powerful argument that he was himself the rightful heir to the crown
+of Naples, and that he relinquished his claim in favour of his
+younger brother.  He had backed the argument by the payment to the
+Pope of the enormous sum, for those days, of one hundred thousand
+gold crowns, and the issue, obscure hitherto, had immediately become
+clear to the Papal Court.
+
+It was check to Charles, as I have said.  But Charles braced himself,
+and considered the counter-move that should give him the advantage.
+He went to congratulate Andreas, and found him swollen with pride
+and arrogance in his triumph.
+
+"Be welcome, Charles," he hailed Durazzo.  "I am not the man to
+forget those who have stood my friends whilst my power was undecided."
+
+"For your own sake," said the smooth Charles, as he stepped back
+from that brotherly embrace, "I trust you'll not forget those who
+have been your enemies, and who, being desperate now, may take
+desperate means to avert your coronation."
+
+The pale eyes of the Hungarian glittered.
+
+"Of whom do you speak?"
+
+Charles smoothed his black beard thoughtfully, his dark eyes narrowed
+and pensive.  There must be a victim, to strike fear into Giovanna's
+friends and stir them to Charles's purposes.
+
+"Why, first and foremost, I should place Giovanna's counsellor
+Isernia, that man of law whose evil counsels have hurt your rights
+as king.  Next come - "
+
+But here Charles craftily paused and looked away, a man at fault.
+
+"Next?" cried Andreas.  "Who next? Speak out!" The Duke shrugged.
+
+"By the Passion, there is no lack of others.  You have enemies to
+spare among the Queen's friends."
+
+Andreas paled under his faint tan.  He flung back his crimson robe
+as if he felt the heat, and stood forth, lithe as a wrestler, in
+his close-fitting cote-hardie and hose of violet silk.
+
+"No need, indeed, to name them," he said fiercely.
+
+"None," Charles agreed.  "But the most dangerous is Isernia.  Whilst
+he lives you walk amid swords.  His death may spread a panic that
+will paralyze the others."
+
+He would say no more, knowing that he had said enough to send
+Andreas, scowling and sinister, to sow terror in hearts that guilt
+must render uneasy now, amongst which hearts be sure that he
+counted Giovanna's own.
+
+Andreas took counsel with Friar Robert.  Touching Isernia, there
+was evidence and to spare that he was dangerous, and so Isernia
+fell on the morrow to an assassin's sword as he was in the very
+act of leaving the Castel Nuovo, and it was Charles himself who
+bore word of it to the Court, and so plunged it into consternation.
+
+They walked in the cool of evening in the pleasant garden of the
+Castel Nuovo, when Charles came upon them and touched the stalwart
+shoulder of Bertrand d'Artois.  Bertrand the favourite eyed him
+askance, mistrusting and disliking him for his association with
+Andreas.
+
+"The Hungarian boar," said Charles, "is sharpening his tusks now
+that his authority is assured by the Holy Father."
+
+"Who cares?" sneered Bertrand.
+
+"Should you care if I added that already he has blooded them?"
+
+Bertrand changed countenance.  The Duke explained himself.
+
+"He has made a beginning upon Giacomo d' Isernia.  Ten minutes ago
+he was stabbed to death within a stone's throw of the castle."  So
+Charles unburdened himself of his news.  "A beginning, no more."
+
+"My God!" said Bertrand.  "D' Isernia! Heaven rest him."  And
+devoutly he crossed himself.
+
+"Heaven will rest some more of you if you suffer Andreas of Hungary
+to be its instrument," said Charles, his lips grimly twisted.
+
+"Do you threaten?"
+
+"Nay, man; be not so hot and foolish.  I warn.  I know his mood.
+I know what he intends."
+
+"You ever had his confidence," said Bertrand, sneering.
+
+"Until this hour I had.  But there's an end to that.  I am a Prince
+of Naples, and I'll not bend the knee to a barbarian.  He was well
+enough to hunt with and drink with, so long as he was Duke of
+Calabria with no prospect of being more.  But that he should become
+my King, and that our lady Giovanna should be no more than a queen
+consort - "  He made a gesture of ineffable disgust.
+
+Bertrand's eyes kindled.  He gripped the other's arm, and drew him
+along under a trellis of vines that formed a green cloister about
+the walls.
+
+"Why, here is great news for our Queen," he cried.  "It will rejoice
+her, my lord, to know you are loyal to her."
+
+"That is no matter," he replied.  "What matters is that you should
+be warned - you, yourself in particular, and Evoli.  No doubt there
+will be others, too.  But the Hungarian's confidences went no
+further."
+
+Bertrand had come to a standstill.  He stared at Charles, and slowly
+the colour left his face.
+
+"Me?" he said, a finger on his heart.
+
+"Aye, you.  You will be the next.  But not until the crown is firmly
+on his brow.  Then he will settle his score with the nobles of
+Naples who have withstood him.  Listen," and Charles's voice sank
+as if under the awful burden of his news; "a black banner of
+vengeance is to precede him to his coronation.  And your name stands
+at the head of the list of the proscribed.  Does it surprise you?
+After all, he is a husband, and he has some knowledge of what lies
+between the Queen and you - "
+
+"Stop!"
+
+"Pish!" Charles shrugged.  "What need for silence upon what all
+Naples knows?  When have you and the Queen ever used discretion?
+In your place I should not need a warning.  I should know what to
+expect from a husband become king."
+
+"The Queen must be told."
+
+"Indeed, I think so, too.  It will come best from you.  Go tell her,
+so that measures may be taken.  But go secretly and warily.  You
+are safe until he wears the crown.  And above all - whatever you may
+decide - do nothing here in Naples."
+
+And on that he turned to depart, whilst Bertrand sped to Giovanna.
+On the threshold of the garden Charles paused and looked back.  His
+eyes sought and found the Queen, a tall, lissome girl of seventeen,
+in a close-fitting, revealing gown of purple silk, the high, white
+gorget outlining an oval face of a surpassing loveliness, crowned
+by a wealth of copper-coloured hair.  She was standing in a stricken
+attitude, looking up into the face of her lover, who was delivering
+himself of his news.
+
+Charles departed satisfied.
+
+Three days later a man of the Queen's household, one Melazzo, who
+was in Duke Charles's pay, brought him word that the seed he had
+cast had fallen upon fertile soil.  A conspiracy to destroy the King
+had been laid by Bertrand d'Artois, Robert of Cabane, Count of Evoli,
+and the latter's brothers-in-law, Terlizzi and Morcone.  Melazzo
+himself, for his notorious affection for the Queen, had been included
+in this band, and also a man named Pace, who was body servant to
+Andreas, and who, like Melazzo, was in Charles's pay.
+
+Charles of Durazzo smiled gently to himself.  The game went
+excellently well.
+
+"The Court," he sad, "goes to Aversa for a month before the
+coronation.  That would be a favourable season to their plan.  Advise
+it so."
+
+The date appointed for the coronation was September 20th.  A month
+before - on August 20th - the Court removed itself from the heat and
+reek of Naples to the cooler air of Aversa, there to spend the time
+of waiting.  They were housed in the monastery of Saint Peter, which
+had been converted as far as possible into a royal residence for
+the occasion.
+
+On the night of their arrival there the refectory of the monastery
+was transfigured to accommodate the numerous noble and very jovial
+company assembled there to sup.  The long, stone-flagged room, lofty
+and with windows set very high, normally so bare and austere, was
+hung now with tapestries, and the floor strewn with rushes that were
+mingled with lemon verbena and other aromatic herbs.  Along the
+lateral walls and across the end of the room that faced the double
+doors were set the stone tables of the Spartan monks, on a shallow
+dais that raised them above the level of the floor.  These tables
+were gay now with the gleam of crystal and the glitter of gold and
+silver plate.  Along one side of them, their backs to the walls,
+sat the ladies and nobles of the Court.  The vaulted ceiling was
+rudely frescoed to represent the open heavens - the work of a
+brother whose brush was more devout than cunning - and there was
+the inevitable cenacolo above the Abbot's table at the upper end of
+the room.
+
+At this table sat the royal party, the broad-shouldered Andreas of
+Hungary, slightly asprawl, his golden mane somewhat tumbled now,
+for he was drinking deeply in accordance with his barbarian habit;
+ever and anon he would fling down a bone or a piece of meat to the
+liver-coloured hounds that crouched expectant on the rushes of the
+floor.
+
+They had hunted that day in the neighbourhood of Capua, and Andreas
+had acquitted himself well, and was in high good-humour, giving now
+little thought to the sinister things that Charles of Durazzo had
+lately whispered, laughing and jesting with the traitor Morcone at
+his side.  Behind him in close attendance stood his servant Pace,
+once a creature of Durazzo's.  The Queen sat on his right, making
+but poor pretence to eat; her lovely young face was of a ghostly
+pallor, her dark eyes were wide and staring.  Among the guests were
+the black-browed Evoli and his brother-in-law, Terlizzi; Bertrand
+of Artois and his father; Melazzo, that other creature of Charles's,
+and Filippa the Catanese, handsome and arrogant, but oddly silent
+to-night.
+
+But Charles of Durazzo was not of the company.  It is not for the
+player, himself, to become a piece upon the board.
+
+He had caught a whisper that the thing he had so slyly prompted to
+Bertrand d'Artois was to be done here at Aversa, and so Charles had
+remained at Naples.  He had discovered very opportunely that his
+wife was ailing, and he developed such concern for her that he could
+not bring himself to leave her side.  He had excused himself to
+Andreas with a thousand regrets, since what he most desired was to
+enjoy with him the cool, clean air of Aversa and the pleasures of
+the chase; and he had presented the young King at parting with the
+best of all his falcons in earnest of affection and disappointment.
+
+The night wore on, and at last, at a sign from the Queen, the ladies
+rose and departed to their beds.  The men settled down again.  The
+cellarers redoubled their activities, the flagons circulated more
+briskly, and the noise they made must have disturbed the monks
+entrenched in their cells against these earthly vanities.  The
+laughter of Andreas grew louder and more vacuous, and when at last
+he heaved himself up at midnight and departed to bed, that he might
+take some rest against the morrow's hunt, he staggered a little in
+his walk.
+
+But there were other hunters there whose impatience could not keep
+until the morrow, whose game was to be run to death that very night.
+They waited - Bertrand d'Artois, Robert of Cabane, the Counts of
+Terlizzi and Morcone, Melazzo and Andreas's body servant Pace - until
+all those who lay at Aversa were deep in slumber.  Then at two
+o'clock in the morning they made their stealthy way to the loggia
+on the third floor, a long colonnaded gallery above the Abbot's
+garden.  They paused a moment before the Queen's door which opened
+upon this gallery, then crept on to that of the King's room at the
+other end.  It was Pace who rapped sharply on the panels thrice
+before he was answered by a sleepy growl from the other side.
+
+"It is I - Pace - my lord," he announced.  "A courier has arrived
+from Naples, from Friar Robert, with instant messages."
+
+>From within there was a noisy yawn, a rustle, the sound of an
+overturning stool, and, lastly, the rasp of a bolt being withdrawn.
+The door opened, and in the faint light of the dawning day Andreas
+appeared, drawing a furlined robe about his body, which was naked
+of all but a shirt.
+
+He saw no one but Pace.  The others had drawn aside into the shadows.
+Unsuspecting, he stepped forth.
+
+"Where is this messenger?"
+
+The door through which he had come slammed suddenly behind him, and
+he turned to see Melazzo in the act of bolting it with a dagger to
+prevent any one from following that way - for the room had another
+door opening upon the inner corridor.
+
+Instead, Melazzo might have employed his dagger to stab Andreas
+behind, and so have made an instant end.  But it happened to be
+known that Andreas wore an amulet - a ring that his mother had
+given him - which rendered him invulnerable to steel or poison.
+And such was the credulity of his age, such the blind faith of those
+men in the miraculous power of that charm, that none of them so much
+as attempted to test it with a dagger.  It was for the same reason
+that no recourse was had to the still easier method of disposing of
+him by poison.  Accepting the amulet at its legendary value, the
+conspirators had resolved that he must be strangled.
+
+As he turned now they leapt upon him, and, taking him unawares, bore
+him to the ground before he could realize what was happening.  Here
+they grappled with him, and he with them.  He was endowed with the
+strength of a young bull, and he made full use of it.  He rose,
+beating them off, to be borne down again, bellowing the while for
+help.  He smote out blindly, and stretched Morcone half senseless
+with a blow of his great fist.
+
+Seeing how difficult he proved to strangle, they must have cursed
+that amulet of his.  He struggled to his knees again, then to his
+feet, and, at last, with bleeding face, leaving tufts of his fair
+hair in their murderous hands, he broke through and went bounding
+down the loggia, screaming as he ran, until he came to his wife's
+door.  Against that he hurled himself, calling her.
+
+"Giovanna! Giovanna!  For the love of God crucified!  Open!  Open!
+I am being murdered!"
+
+>From within came no answer - utter silence.
+
+"Giovanna! Giovanna!"  He beat frenziedly upon the door.
+
+Still no answer, which yet was answer enough.
+
+The stranglers, momentarily discomfited, scared, too, lest his cries
+should rouse the convent, had stood hesitating after he broke from
+them.  But now Bertrand d'Artois, realizing that too much had been
+done already to admit of the business being left unfinished, sprang
+upon him suddenly again.  Locked in each other's arms, those
+wrestlers swayed and panted in the loggia for a moment, then with
+a crash went down, Bertrand on top, Andreas striking his head against
+the stone floor as he fell.  The Queen's lover pinned him there,
+kneeling upon his breast.
+
+"The rope!" he panted to the others who came up.
+
+One of them threw him a coil of purple silk interwrought with gold
+thread, in which a running noose had been tied.  Bertrand slipped it
+over Andreas's head, drew it taut, and held it so, despite the man's
+desperate, convulsive struggles.  The others came to his assistance.
+Amongst them they lifted the writhing victim to the parapet of the
+loggia, and flung him over; whilst Bertrand, Cabane, and Pace bore
+upon the rope, arresting his fall, and keeping him suspended there
+until he should be dead.  Melazzo and Morcone came to assist them,
+and it was then that Cabane observed that Terlizzi held aloof, as if
+filled with horror.
+
+Peremptorily he called to him:
+
+"Hither, and lend a hand!  The rope is long enough to afford you a
+grip.  We want accomplices, not witnesses, Lord Count."
+
+Terlizzi obeyed, and then the ensuing silence was broken suddenly
+by screams from the floor below the screams of a woman who slept in
+the room immediately underneath, who had awakened to behold in the
+grey light of the breaking day the figure of a man kicking and
+writhing at a rope's end before her window.
+
+Yet a moment the startled stranglers kept their grip of the rope
+until the struggles at the end of it had ceased; then they loosed
+their hold and let the body go plunging down into the Abbot's garden.
+Thereafter they scattered and fled, for people were stirring now in
+the convent, aroused by the screams of the woman.
+
+Thrice, so the story runs, came the monks to the Queen's door to
+knock and demand her orders for the disposal of the body of her
+husband without receiving any answer to their question.  It remained
+still unanswered when later in the day she departed from Aversa in
+a closed litter, and returned to Naples escorted by a company of
+lances, and for lack of instructions the monks left the body in the
+Abbot's garden, where it had fallen, until Charles of Durazzo came
+to remove it two days later.
+
+Ostentatiously he bore to Naples the murdered Prince - whose death
+he had so subtly inspired - and in the cathedral before the
+Hungarians, whom he had assembled, and in the presence of a vast
+concourse of the people, he solemnly swore over the body vengeance
+upon the murderers.
+
+Having made a cat's-paw of Giovanna - through the person of her
+lover, Bertrand d'Artois, and his confederate assassins - and thus
+cleared away one of those who stood between himself and the throne,
+he now sought to make a cat's-paw of justice to clear away the other.
+Meanwhile, days grew into weeks and weeks into months, and no attempt
+was made by the Queen to hunt out the murderers of her husband, no
+inquiry instituted.  Bertrand d'Artois, it is true, had fled with
+his father to their stronghold of Saint Agatha for safety.  But the
+others - Cabane, Terlizzi, and Morcone - continued unabashed about
+Giovanna's person at the Castel Nuovo.
+
+Charles wrote to Ludwig of Hungary, and to the Pope, demanding that
+justice should be done, and pointing out the neglect of all attempt
+to perform it in the kingdom itself, and inviting them to construe
+for themselves that neglect.  As a consequence, Clement VI issued,
+on June 2d of the following year, a Bull, whereby Bertrand des Baux,
+the Grand Justiciary of Naples, was commanded to hunt down and
+punish the assassins, against whom - at the same time - the Pope
+launched a second Bull, of excommunication.  But the Holy Father
+accompanied his commands to Des Baux by a private note, wherein he
+straitly enjoined the Grand Justiciary for reasons of State to
+permit nothing to transpire that might reflect upon the Queen.
+
+Des Baux set about his task at once, and inspired, no doubt, by
+Charles, proceeded to the arrest of Melazzo and the servant Pace.
+It was not for Charles to accuse the Queen or even any of her nobles,
+whereby he might have aroused against himself the opposition of
+those who were her loyal partisans.  Sufficient for him to point
+out the two meanest of the conspirators, and depend upon the torture
+to wring from them confessions that must gradually pull down the
+rest, and in the end Giovanna herself.
+
+Terlizzi, alive to his danger when he heard of the arrest of those
+two, made a bold and desperate attempt to avert it.  Riding forth
+with a band of followers, he attacked the escort that was bearing
+Pace to prison.  The prisoner was seized, but not to be rescued.
+All that Terlizzi wanted was his silence.  By his orders the
+wretched man's tongue was torn out, whereupon he was abandoned once
+more to his guards and his fate.
+
+Had Terlizzi been able to carry out his intentions of performing
+the like operation upon Melazzo, Charles might have been placed in
+a difficult position.  So much, however, did not happen, and the
+horrible deed upon Pace was in vain.  Put to the question, Melazzo
+denounced Terlizzi, and together with him Cabane, Morcone, and the
+others.  Further, his confession incriminated Filippa, the Catanese,
+and her two daughters, the wives of Terlizzi and Morcone.  Of the
+Queen, however, he said nothing, because, one of the lesser
+conspirators, little more than a servant like Pace, he can have had
+no knowledge of the Queen's complicity.
+
+The arrest of the others followed instantly, and, sentenced to death,
+they were publicly burned in the Square of Sant' Eligio, after
+suffering all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century
+torture, which continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged
+intention of inducing them to denounce any further accomplices.  But
+though they writhed and fainted under the pincers of the executioners,
+they confessed nothing.  Indeed, they preserved a silence which left
+the people amazed, for the people lacked the explanation.  The Grand
+Justiciary, Hugh des Baux, had seen to it that the Pope's injunctions
+should be obeyed.  Lest the condemned should say too much, he had
+taken the precaution of having their tongues fastened down with
+fish-hooks.
+
+Thus Charles was momentarily baulked, and he was further baulked by
+the fact that Giovanna had taken a second husband, in her cousin,
+Louis of Taranto.  Unless matters were to remain there and the game
+end in a stalemate, bold measures were required, and those measures
+Charles adopted.  He wrote to the King of Hungary now openly
+accusing Giovanna of the murder, and pointing out the circumstances
+that in themselves afforded corroboration of his charge.
+
+Those circumstances Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which
+he wrote to Giovanna in answer to her defence against the charge of
+inaction in the matter of her late husband's murderers: "Giovanna,
+thy antecedent disorderly life, thy retention of the exclusive power
+in the kingdom, thy neglect of vengeance upon the murderers of thy
+husband, thy having taken another husband, and thy very excuses
+abundantly prove thy complicity in thy husband's death."
+
+So far this was all as Charles of Durazzo could have desired it.
+But there was more.  Ludwig was advancing now in arms to take
+possession of the kingdom, of which, under all the circumstances,
+he might consider himself the lawful heir, and the Princes of Italy
+were affording him unhindered passage through their States.  This
+was not at all to Charles's liking.  Indeed, unless he bestirred
+himself, it might prove to be checkmate from an altogether unexpected
+quarter, rendering vain all the masterly play with which he had
+conducted the game so far.
+
+It flustered him a little, and in his haste to counter it he
+blundered.
+
+Giovanna, alarmed at the rapid advance of Ludwig, summoned her
+barons to her aid, and in that summons she included Charles,
+realizing that at all costs he must be brought over to her side.
+He went, listened, and finally sold himself for a good price the
+title of Duke of Calabria, which made him heir to the kingdom.
+He raised a powerful troop of lances, and marched upon Aquila,
+which had already hoisted the Hungarian banner.
+
+There it was that he discovered, and soon, his move to have been a
+bad one.  News was brought to him that the Queen, taken with panic,
+had fled to Provence, seeking sanctuary at Avignon.
+
+Charles set about correcting his error without delay, and marched
+out of Aquila to go and meet Ludwig that he might protest his
+loyalty, and range himself under the invader's banner.
+
+At Foligno, the King of Hungary was met by a papal legate, who in
+the name of Pope Clement forbade him under pain of excommunication
+to invade a fief of Holy Church.
+
+"When I am master of Naples," answered Ludwig firmly, "I shall count
+myself a feudatory of the Holy See.  Until then I render account to
+none but God and my conscience."  And he pushed on, preceded by a
+black banner of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder,
+rape, pillage, and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting
+upon the whole land a terrible vengeance for the murder of his
+brother.
+
+Thus he came to Aversa, and there quartered himself and his
+Hungarians upon that convent of Saint Peter where Andreas had been
+strangled a year ago.  And it was here that he was joined by Charles,
+who came protesting loyalty, and whom the King received with open
+arms and a glad welcome, as was to be expected from a man who had
+been Andreas's one true friend in that land of enemies.  Of Charles's
+indiscreet escapade in the matter of Aquila nothing was said.  As
+Charles had fully expected, it was condoned upon the score both of
+the past and the present.
+
+That night there was high feasting in that same refectory where
+Andreas had feasted on the night when the stranglers watched him,
+waiting, and Charles was the guest of honour.  In the morning Ludwig
+was to pursue his march upon the city of Naples, and all were astir
+betimes.
+
+On the point of setting out, Ludwig turned to Charles.
+
+"Before I go," he said, "I have a mind to visit the spot where my
+brother died.
+
+To Charles, no doubt, this seemed a morbid notion to be discouraged.
+But Ludwig was insistent.
+
+"Take me there," he bade the Duke,
+
+"Indeed, I scarce know - I was not here, remember," Charles answered
+him, rendered faintly uneasy, perhaps by a certain grimness in the
+gaunt King's face, perhaps by the mutterings of his own conscience.
+
+"I know that you were not; but surely you must know the place.  It
+will be known to all the world in these parts.  Besides, was it not
+yourself recovered the body?  Conduct me thither, then.
+
+Perforce, then, Charles must do his will.  Arm-in-arm they mounted
+the stairs to that sinister loggia, a half-dozen of Ludwig's
+escorting officers following.
+
+They stepped along the tessellated floor above the Abbot's garden,
+flooded now with sunshine which drew the perfume from the roses
+blooming there.
+
+"Here the King slept," said Charles, "and yonder the Queen.
+Somewhere here between the thing was done, and thence they hanged
+him."
+
+Ludwig, tall and grim, stood considering, chin in hand.  Suddenly
+he wheeled upon the Duke who stood at his elbow.  His face had
+undergone a change, and his lip curled so that he displayed his
+strong teeth as a dog displays them when he snarls.
+
+"Traitor!" he rasped.  "It is you - you who come smiling and fawning
+upon me, and spurring me on to vengeance - who are to blame for what
+happened here."
+
+"I?" Charles fell back, changing colour, his legs trembling under
+him.
+
+"You!" the King answered him furiously.  "His death would never
+have come about but for your intrigues to keep him out of the royal
+power, to hinder his coronation."
+
+"It is false!" cried Charles.  "False!  I swear it before God!"
+
+"Perjured dog!  Do you deny that you sought the aid of your precious
+uncle the Cardinal of Perigord to restrain the Pope from granting
+the Bull required?"
+
+"I do deny it.  The facts deny it.  The Bull was forthcoming."
+
+"Then your denial but proves your guilt," the King answered him,
+and from the leather pouch hanging from his belt, he pulled out a
+parchment, and held it under the Duke's staring eyes.  It was the
+letter he had written to the Cardinal of Perigord, enjoining him to
+prevent the Pope from signing the Bull sanctioning Andreas's
+coronation.
+
+The King smiled terribly into that white, twitching face.
+
+"Deny it now," he mocked him.  "Deny, too, that, bribed by the
+title of Duke of Calabria, you turned to the service of the Queen,
+to abandon it again for ours when you perceived your danger.  You
+think to use us, traitor, as a stepping-stone to help you to mount
+the throne - as you sought to use my brother even to the extent of
+encompassing his murder."
+
+"No, no!  I had no hand in that.  I was his friend - "
+
+"Liar!"  Ludwig struck him across the mouth.
+
+On the instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke,
+fearing that the indignity might spur him to retaliation.
+
+"You are very opportune," said Ludwig; and added coldly, "Dispatch
+him."
+
+Charles screamed a moment, even as Andreas had screamed on that same
+spot, when he found himself staring into the fearful face of death.
+Then the scream became a cough as a Hungarian sword went through him
+from side to side.
+
+They picked up his body from the tessellated floor of the loggia,
+carried it to the parapet as Andreas's had been carried, and flung
+it down into the Abbot's garden as Andreas's had been flung.  It lay
+in a rosebush, dyeing the Abbot's roses a deeper red.
+
+Never was justice more poetic.
+
+
+
+
+XI.  THE NIGHT OF HATE
+
+THE MURDER OF THE DUKE OF GANDIA
+
+
+The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor took the packet proffered him by the
+fair-haired, scarlet-liveried page, and turned it over, considering
+it, the gentle, finely featured, almost ascetic face very thoughtful.
+
+"It was brought, my lord, by a man in a mask, who will give no name.
+ He waits below," said the scarlet stripling.
+
+"A man in a mask, eh?  What mystery!"
+
+The thoughtful brown eyes smiled, the fine hands broke the fragment
+of wax.  A gold ring fell out and rolled some little way along the
+black and purple Eastern rug.  The boy dived after it, and presented
+it to his lordship.
+
+The ring bore an escutcheon, and the Cardinal found graven upon this
+escutcheon his own arms the Sforza lion and the flower of the quince.
+Instantly those dark, thoughtful eyes of his grew keen as they
+flashed upon the page.
+
+"Did you see the device?" he asked, a hint of steel under the
+silkiness of his voice.
+
+"I saw nothing, my lord - a ring, no more.  I did not even look."
+
+The Cardinal continued to ponder him for a long moment very
+searchingly.
+
+"Go - bring this man," he said at last; and the boy departed, soon
+to reappear; holding aside the tapestry that masked the door to give
+passage to a man of middle height wrapped in a black cloak, his face
+under a shower of golden hair, covered from chin to brow by a black
+visor.
+
+At a sign from the Cardinal the page departed.  Then the man, coming
+forward, let fall his cloak, revealing a rich dress of close-fitting
+violet silk, sword and dagger hanging from his jewelled girdle; he
+plucked away the mask, and disclosed the handsome, weak face of
+Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Cotignola, the discarded husband
+of Madonna Lucrezia, Pope Alexander's daughter.
+
+The Cardinal considered his nephew gravely, without surprise.  He
+had expected at first no more than a messenger from the owner of
+that ring.  But at sight of his figure and long, fair hair he had
+recognized Giovanni before the latter had removed his mask.
+
+"I have always accounted you something mad," said the Cardinal
+softly.  "But never mad enough for this.  What brings you to Rome?"
+
+"Necessity, my lord," replied the young tyrant.  "The need to defend
+my honour, which is about to be destroyed."
+
+"And your life?" wondered his uncle.  "Has that ceased to be of
+value?"
+
+"Without honour it is nothing."
+
+"A noble sentiment taught in every school.  But for practical
+purposes - "  The Cardinal shrugged.
+
+Giovanni, however, paid no heed.
+
+"Did you think, my lord, that I should tamely submit to be a
+derided, outcast husband, that I should take no vengeance upon,
+that villainous Pope for having made me a thing of scorn, a byword
+throughout Italy?"  Livid hate writhed in his fair young face.  "Did
+you think I should, indeed, remain in Pesaro, whither I fled before
+their threats to my life, and present no reckoning?"
+
+"What is the reckoning you have in mind?" inquired his uncle,
+faintly ironical.  "You'll not be intending to kill the Holy Father?"
+
+"Kill him?" Giovanni laughed shortly, scornfully.  "Do the dead
+suffer?"
+
+"In hell, sometimes," said the Cardinal.
+
+"Perhaps.  But I want to be sure.  I want sufferings that I can
+witness, sufferings that I can employ as balsam for my own wounded
+honour.  I shall strike, even as he has stricken me - at his soul,
+not at his body.  I shall wound him where he is most sensitive."
+
+Ascanio Sforza, towering tall and slender in his scarlet robes,
+shook his head slowly.
+
+"All this is madness - madness!  You were best away, best in Pesaro.
+Indeed, you cannot safely show your face in Rome."
+
+"That is why I go masked.  That is why I come to you, my lord, for
+shelter here until - "
+
+"Here?"  The Cardinal was instantly alert.  "Then you think I am
+as mad as yourself.  Why, man, if so much as a whisper of your
+presence in Rome got abroad, this is the first place where they
+would look nor you.  If you will have your way, if you are so set
+on the avenging of past wrongs and the preventing of future ones,
+it is not for me, your kinsman, to withstand you.  But here in my
+palace you cannot stay, for your own safety's sake.  That page who
+brought you, now; I would not swear he did not see the arms upon
+your ring.  I pray that he did not.  But if he did, your presence
+is known here already."
+
+Giovanni was perturbed.
+
+"But if not here, where, then, in Rome should I be safe?"
+
+"Nowhere, I think," answered the ironical Ascanio.  "Though perhaps
+you might count yourself safe with Pico.  Your common hate of the
+Holy Father should be a stout bond between you."
+
+Fate prompted the suggestion.  Fate drove the Lord of Pesaro to act
+upon it, and to seek out Antonio Maria Pico, Count of Mirandola, in
+his palace by the river, where Pico, as Ascanio had foreseen, gave
+him a cordial welcome.
+
+There he abode almost in hiding until the end of May, seldom issuing
+forth, and never without his mask - a matter this which excited no
+comment, for masked faces were common in the streets of Rome in the
+evening of the fifteenth century.  In talk with Pico he set forth
+his intent, elaborating what already he had told the Cardinal
+Vice-Chancellor.
+
+"He is a father - this Father of Fathers," he said once.  "A tender,
+loving father whose life is in his children, who lives through them
+and for them.  Deprive him of them, and his life would become empty,
+worthless, a living death.  There is Giovanni, who is as the apple
+of his eye, whom he has created Duke of Gandia, Duke of Benevento,
+Prince of Sessa, Lord of Teano, and more besides.  There is the
+Cardinal of Valencia, there is Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, and
+there is my wife, Lucrezia, of whom he has robbed me.  There is, you
+see, an ample heel to our Achilles.  The question is, where shall we
+begin?"
+
+"And also, how," Pico reminded him.
+
+Fate was to answer both those questions, and that soon.
+
+They went on June 1st - the Lord of Pesaro, with his host and his
+host's daughter, Antonia - to spend the day at Pico's vineyard in
+Trastevere.  At the moment of setting out to return to Rome in the
+evening the Count was detained by his steward, newly returned from
+a journey with matters to communicate to him.
+
+He bade his guest, with his daughter and their attendants, to ride
+on, saying that he himself would follow and overtake them.  But the
+steward detained him longer than he had expected, so that, although
+the company proceeded leisurely towards the city, Pico had not come
+up with them when they reached the river.  In the narrow street
+beyond the bridge the little escort found itself suddenly confronted
+and thrust aside by a magnificent cavalcade of ladies and gallants,
+hawk on wrist and followed by a pack of hounds.
+
+Giovanni had eyes for one only in that gay company - a tall,
+splendidly handsome man in green, a Plumed bonnet on his auburn head,
+and a roguish, jovial eye, which, in its turn, saw nobody in that
+moment but Madonna Antonia, reclining in her litter, the leather
+curtains of which she had drawn back that she might converse with
+Giovanni as they rode.
+
+The Lord of Pesaro beheld the sudden kindling of his brother-in-law's
+glance, for that handsome gallant was the Duke of Gandia, the Pope's
+eldest son, the very apple of the Holy Father's eye.  He saw the
+Duke's almost unconscious check upon his reins; saw him turn in the
+saddle to stare boldly at Madonna Antonia until, grown conscious of
+his regard, she crimsoned under it.  And when at last the litter had
+moved on, he saw over his shoulder a mounted servant detach from the
+Duke's side to follow them.  This fellow dogged their heels all the
+way to the Parione Quarter, obviously with intent to discover for his
+master where the beautiful lady of the litter might be housed.
+
+Giovanni said naught of this to Pico when he returned a little later.
+He was quick to perceive the opportunity that offered, but far from
+sure that Pico would suffer his daughter to be used as a decoy; far,
+indeed, from sure that he dared himself so employ her.  But on the
+morrow, chancing to look from a window out of idle curiosity to see
+what horse it was that was pacing in the street below, he beheld a
+man in a rich cloak, in whom at once he recognized the Duke, and he
+accounted that the dice of destiny had fallen.
+
+Himself unseen by that horseman, Giovanni drew back quickly.  On the
+spur of the moment, he acted with a subtlety worthy of long
+premeditation.  Antonia and he were by an odd fatality alone together
+in that chamber of the mezzanine.  He turned to her.
+
+"An odd fellow rides below here, tarrying as if expectant.  I wonder
+should you know who he is."
+
+Obeying his suggestion, she rose - a tall, slim child of some
+eighteen years, of a delicate, pale beauty, with dark, thoughtful
+eyes and long, black tresses, interwoven with jewelled strands of
+gold thread.  She rustled to the window and looked down upon that
+cavalier; and, as she looked, scanning him intently, the Duke raised
+his head.  Their eyes met, and she drew back with a little cry.
+
+"What is it?" exclaimed Giovanni.
+
+"It is that insolent fellow who stared at me last evening in the
+street.  I would you had not bidden me look."
+
+Now, whilst she had been gazing from the window, Giovanni, moving
+softly behind her, had espied a bowl of roses on the ebony table in
+the room's middle.  Swiftly and silently he had plucked a blossom,
+which he now held behind his back.  As she turned from him again,
+he sent it flying through the window; and whilst in his heart he
+laughed with bitter hate and scorn as he thought of Gandia snatching
+up that rose and treasuring it in his bosom, aloud he laughed at her
+fears, derided them as idle.
+
+That night, in his room, Giovanni practised penmanship assiduously,
+armed with a model with which Antonia had innocently equipped him.
+He went to bed well pleased, reflecting that as a man lives so does
+he die.  Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, had been ever an amiable
+profligate, a heedless voluptuary obeying no spur but that of his
+own pleasure, which should drive him now to his destruction.
+Giovanni Borgia, he considered further, was, as he had expressed it,
+the very apple of his father's eye; and since, of his own accord,
+the Duke had come to thrust his foolish head into the noose, the
+Lord of Pesaro would make a sweet beginning to the avenging of his
+wrongs by drawing it taut.
+
+Next morning saw him at the Vatican, greatly daring, to deliver in
+person his forgery to the Duke.  Suspicious of his mask, they asked
+him who he was and whence he came.
+
+"Say one who desires to remain unknown with a letter for the Duke
+of Gandia which his magnificence will welcome."
+
+Reluctantly, a chamberlain departed with his message.  Anon he was
+conducted above to the magnificent apartments which Gandia occupied
+during his sojourn there.
+
+He found the Duke newly risen, and with him his brother, the
+auburn-headed young Cardinal of Valencia, dressed in a close-fitting
+suit of black, that displayed his lithe and gracefully athletic
+proportions, and a cloak of scarlet silk to give a suggestion of
+his ecclesiastical rank.
+
+Giovanni bowed low, and, thickening his voice that it might not be
+recognized, announced himself and his mission in one.
+
+"From the lady of the rose," said he, proffering the letter.
+
+Valencia stared a moment; then went off into a burst of laughter.
+Gandia's face flamed and his eyes sparkled.  He snatched the letter,
+broke its seal, and consumed its contents.  Then he flung away to a
+table, took up a pen, and sat down to write; the tall Valencia
+watching him with amused scorn a while, then crossing to his side
+and setting a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"You will never learn," said the more subtle Cesare.  "You must
+forever be leaving traces where traces are not to be desired."
+
+Gandia looked up into that keen, handsome young face.
+
+"You are right," he said; and crumpled the letter in his hand.
+
+Then he looked at the messenger and hesitated.
+
+"I am in Madonna's confidence," said the man in the mask.
+
+Gandia rose.  "Then say - say that her letter has carried me to
+Heaven; that I but await her commands to come in person to declare
+myself.  But bid her hasten, for within two weeks from now I go to
+Naples, and thence I may return straight to Spain."
+
+"The opportunity shall be found, Magnificent.  Myself I shall bring
+you word of it."
+
+The Duke loaded him with thanks, and in his excessive gratitude
+pressed upon him at parting a purse of fifty ducats, which Giovanni
+flung into the Tiber some ten minutes later as he was crossing the
+Bridge of Sant' Angelo on his homeward way.
+
+The Lord of Pesaro proceeded without haste.  Delay and silence he
+knew would make Gandia the more sharp-set, and your sharp-set,
+impatient fellow is seldom cautious.  Meanwhile, Antonia had
+mentioned to her father that princely stranger who had stared so
+offendingly one evening, and who for an hour on the following
+morning had haunted the street beneath her window.  Pico mentioned
+it to Giovanni, whereupon Giovanni told him frankly who it was.
+
+"It was that libertine brother-in-law of mine, the Duke of Gandia,"
+he said.  "Had he persisted, I should have bidden you look to your
+daughter.  As it is, no doubt he has other things to think of.  He
+is preparing for his journey to Naples, to accompany his brother
+Cesare, who goes as papal legate to crown Federigo of Aragon."
+
+There he left the matter, and no more was heard of it until the night
+of June 14th, the very eve of the departure of the Borgia princes
+upon that mission.
+
+Cloaked and masked, Giovanni took his way to the Vatican at dusk that
+evening, and desired to have himself announced to the Duke.  But he
+was met with the answer that the Duke was absent; that he had gone to
+take leave of his mother and to sup at her villa in Trastevere.  His
+return was not expected until late.
+
+At first Giovanni feared that, in leaving the consummation of his
+plot until the eleventh hour, he had left it too late.  In his
+anxiety he at once set out on foot, as he was, for the villa of
+Madonna Giovanna de Catanei.  He reached it towards ten o'clock
+that night, to be informed that Gandia was there, at supper.  The
+servant went to bear word to the Duke that a man in a mask was
+asking to see him, a message which instantly flung Gandia into
+agitation.  Excitedly he commanded that the man be brought to him
+at once.
+
+The Lord of Pesaro was conducted through the house and out into the
+garden to an arbour of vine, where a rich table was spread in the
+evening cool, lighted by alabaster lamps.  About this table Giovanni
+found a noble company of his own relations by marriage.  There was
+Gandia, who rose hurriedly at his approach, and came to meet him;
+there was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples
+to-morrow as papal legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold,
+with no trace of his churchly dignity about him; there was their
+younger brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling,
+flanked by his wife, the free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon,
+swarthy, coarse-featured, and fleshy, despite her youth; there was
+Giovanni's sometime wife; the lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the
+innocent cause of all this hate that festered in the Lord of Pesaro's
+soul; there was their mother, the nobly handsome Giovanozza de
+Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their auburn heads; and there
+was their cousin, Giovanni Borgia, Cardinal of Monreale, portly and
+scarlet, at Madonna's side.
+
+All turned to glance at this masked intruder who had the power so
+oddly to excite their beloved Gandia.
+
+"From the lady of the rose," Giovanni announced himself softly to
+the Duke.
+
+"Yes, yes," came the answer, feverishly impatient.  "Well, what is
+your message?"
+
+"To-night her father is from home.  She will expect your magnificence
+at midnight."
+
+Gandia drew a deep breath.
+
+"By the Host!  You are no more than in time.  I had almost despaired,
+my friend, my best of friends.  To-night!"  He pronounced the word
+ecstatically.  "Wait you here.  Yourself you shall conduct me.
+Meanwhile, go sup."
+
+And beating his hands, he summoned attendants.
+
+Came the steward and a couple of Moorish slaves in green turbans, to
+whose care the Duke commanded his masked visitor.  But Giovanni
+neither required nor desired their ministrations; he would not eat
+nor drink, but contented himself with the patience of hatred to sit
+for two long hours awaiting the pleasure of his foolish victim.
+
+They left at last, a little before midnight the Duke, his brother
+Cesare, his cousin Monreale, and a numerous attendance, his own
+retinue and those of the two cardinals.  Thus they rode back to
+Rome, the Borgias very gay, the man in the mask plodding along
+beside them.
+
+They came to the Rione de Ponte, where their ways were to separate,
+and there, opposite the palace of the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor,
+Gandia drew rein.  He announced to the others that he went no farther
+with them, summoned a single groom to attend him, and bade the
+remainder return to the Vatican and await him there.
+
+There was a last jest and a laugh from Cesare as the cavalcade went
+on towards the papal palace.  Then Gandia turned to the man in the
+mask, bade him get up on the crupper of his horse, and so rode
+slowly off in the direction of the Giudecca, the single attendant
+he had retained trotting beside his stirrup.
+
+Giovanni directed his brother-in-law, not to the main entrance of
+the house, but to the garden gate, which opened upon a narrow alley.
+Here they dismounted, flinging the reins to the groom, who was bidden
+to wait.  Giovanni produced a key, unlocked the door, and ushered the
+Duke into the gloom of the garden.  A stone staircase ran up to the
+loggia on the mezzanine, and by this way was Gandia now conducted,
+treading softly.  His guide went ahead.  He had provided himself with
+yet another key, and so unlocked the door from the loggia which opened
+upon the ante-room of Madonna Antonia.  He held the door for the Duke,
+who hesitated, seeing all in darkness.
+
+"In," Giovanni bade him.  "Tread softly.  Madonna waits for you."
+
+Recklessly, then, that unsuspecting fellow stepped into the trap.
+
+Giovanni followed, closed the door, and locked it.  The Duke,
+standing with quickened pulses in that impenetrable blackness, found
+himself suddenly embraced, not at all after the fond fashion he was
+expecting.  A wrestler's arms enlaced his body, a sinewy leg coiled
+itself snake-wise about one of his own, pulling it from under him.
+As he crashed down under the weight of his unseen opponent, a great
+voice boomed out:
+
+"Lord of Mirandola!  To me!  Help!  Thieves!"
+
+Suddenly a door opened.  Light flooded the gloom, and the writhing
+Duke beheld a white vision of the girl whose beauty had been the
+lure that had drawn him into this peril which, as yet, he scarcely
+understood.  But looking up into the face of the man who grappled
+with him, the man who held him there supine under his weight, he
+began at last to understand, or, at least, to suspect, for the face
+he saw, unmasked now, leering at him with hate unspeakable through
+the cloud of golden hair that half met across it, was the face of
+Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, whom his family had so cruelly
+wronged.  Giovanni Sforza's was the voice that now fiercely announced
+his doom.
+
+"You and yours have made me a thing of scorn and laughter.  Yourself
+have laughed at me.  Go laugh in hell!"
+
+A blade flashed up in Giovanni's hand.  Gandia threw up an arm to
+fend his breast, and the blade buried itself in the muscles.  He
+screamed with pain and terror.  The other laughed with hate and
+triumph, and stabbed again, this time in the shoulder.
+
+Antonia, from the threshold, watching in bewilderment and panic, sent
+a piercing scream to ring through the house, and then the voice of
+Giovanni, fierce yet exultant, called aloud:
+
+"Pico!  Pico!  Lord of Mirandola!  Look to your daughter!"
+
+Came steps and voice, more light, flooding now the chamber, and
+through the mists gathering before his eyes the first-born of the
+house of Borgia beheld hurrying men, half dressed, with weapons in
+their hands.  But whether they came to kill or to save, they came
+too late: Ten times Giovanni's blade had stabbed the Duke, yet,
+hindered by the Duke's struggles and by the effort of holding him
+there, he had been unable to find his heart, wherefore, as those
+others entered now, he slashed his victim across the throat, and so
+made an end.
+
+He rose, covered with blood, so ghastly and terrific that Pico,
+thinking him wounded, ran to him.  But Giovanni reassured him with
+a laugh, and pointed with his dripping dagger.
+
+"The blood is his - foul Borgia blood!"
+
+At the name Pico started, and there was a movement as of fear from
+the three grooms who followed him.  The Count looked down at that
+splendid, blood-spattered figure lying there so still, its sightless
+eyes staring up at the frescoed ceiling, so brave and so pitiful in
+his gold-broidered suit of white satin, with the richly jewelled
+girdle carrying gloves and purse and a jewelled dagger that had been
+so useless in that extremity.
+
+"Gandia" he cried; and looked at Giovanni with round eyes of fear
+and amazement.  "How came he here?"
+
+"How?"
+
+With bloody hand Giovanni pointed to the open door of Antonia's
+chamber.
+
+"That was the lure, my lord.  Taking the air outside, I saw him
+slinking hither, and took him for a thief, as, indeed, he was - a
+thief of honour, like all his kind.  I followed, and - there he
+lies."
+
+"My God!" cried Pico.  And then hoarsely asked, "And Antonia?"
+
+Giovanni dismissed the question abruptly.
+
+"She saw, yet she knows nothing."
+
+And then on another note:
+
+"Up now, Pico!" he cried.  "Arouse the city, and let all men know
+how Gandia died the death of a thief.  Let all men know this Borgia
+brood for what it is."
+
+"Are you mad?" cried Pico.  "Will I put my neck under the knife?"
+
+"You took him here in the night, and yours was the right to kill.
+You exercised it."
+
+Pico looked long and searchingly into the other's face.  True, all
+the appearances bore out the tale, as did, too, what had gone before
+and had been the cause of Antonia's complaint to him.  Yet, knowing
+what lay between Sforza and Borgia, it may have seemed to Pico too
+extraordinary a coincidence that Giovanni should have been so ready
+at hand to defend the honour of the House of Mirandola.  But he asked
+no questions.  He was content in his philosophy to accept the event
+and be thankful for it on every count.  But as for Giovanni's
+suggestion that he should proclaim through Rome how he had exercised
+his right to slay this Tarquin, the Lord of Mirandola had no mind to
+adopt it.
+
+"What is done is done," he said shortly, in a tone that conveyed much.
+"Let it suffice us all.  It but remains now to be rid of this."
+
+"You will keep silent?" cried Giovanni, plainly vexed.
+
+"I am not a fool," said Pico gently.
+
+Giovanni understood.  "And these your men?"
+
+"Ate very faithful friends who will aid you now to efface all
+traces."
+
+And upon that he moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence
+was intriguing him.  Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to
+find her in a swoon across her bed.  She had fainted from sheer
+horror at what she had seen.
+
+Followed by the three servants bearing the body, Giovanni went down
+across the garden very gently.  Approaching the gate, he bade them
+wait, saying that he went to see that the coast was clear.  Then,
+going forward alone, he opened the gate and called softly to the
+waiting groom:
+
+"Hither to me!"
+
+Promptly the man surged before him in the gloom, and as promptly
+Giovanni sank his dagger in the fellow's breast.  He deplored the
+necessity for the deed, but it was unavoidable, and your
+cinquecentist never shrank from anything that necessity imposed
+upon him.  To let the lackey live would be to have the bargelli in
+the house by morning.
+
+The man sank with a half-uttered cry, and lay still.
+
+Giovanni dragged him aside under the shelter of the wall, where the
+others would not see him, then called softly to them to follow.
+
+When the grooms emerged from Pico's garden, the Lord of Pesaro was
+astride of the fine white horse on which Gandia had ridden to his
+death.
+
+"Put him across the crupper," he bade them.
+
+And they so placed the body, the head dangling on one side, the
+legs on the other.  And Giovanni reflected grimly how he had
+reversed the order in which Gandia and he had ridden that same
+horse an hour ago.
+
+At a walk they proceeded down the lane towards the river, a groom
+on each side to see that the burden on the crupper did not jolt
+off, another going ahead to scout.  At the alley's mouth Giovanni
+drew rein, and let the man emerge upon the river-bank and look to
+right and left to make sure that there was no one about.
+
+He saw no one.  Yet one there was who saw them Giorgio, the timber
+merchant, who lay aboard his boat moored to the Schiavoni, and who,
+three days later, testified to what he saw.  You know his testimony.
+It has been repeated often - how he saw the man emerge from the
+alley and look up and down, then retire, to emerge again, accompanied
+now by the horseman with his burden, and the other two; how he saw
+them take the body from the crupper of the horse, and, with a "one,
+two, and three," fling it into the river; how he heard the horseman
+ask them had they thrown it well into the middle, and their answer
+of, "Yes my lord"; and finally, when asked why he had not come
+earlier to report the matter, how he had answered that he had thought
+nothing of it, having in his time seen more than a hundred bodies
+flung into the Tiber at night.
+
+Returned to the garden gate, Giovanni bade the men go in without him.
+There was something yet that he must do.  When they had gone, he
+dismounted, and went to the body of the groom which he had left under
+the wall.  He must remove that too.  He cut one of the
+stirrup-leathers from the saddle, and attaching one end of it to the
+dead man's arm, mounted again, and dragged him thus - ready to leave
+the body and ride off at the first alarm - some little way, until he
+came to the Piazza della Giudecca.  Here, in the very heart of the
+Jewish quarters, he left the body, and his movements hereafter are
+a little obscure.  Perhaps he set out to return to Pico della
+Mirandola's house, but becoming, as was natural, uneasy on the way,
+fearing lest all traces should, after all, not have been effaced,
+lest the Duke should be traced to that house, and himself, if found
+there, dealt with summarily upon suspicion, he turned about, and went
+off to seek sanctuary with his uncle, the Vice-Chancellor.
+
+The Duke's horse, which he had ridden, he turned loose in the streets,
+where it was found some hours later, and first gave occasion to
+rumours of foul play.  The rumours growing, with the discovery of the
+body of Gandia's groom, and search-parties of armed bargelli scouring
+Rome, and the Giudecca in particular, in the course of the next two
+days, forth at last came Giorgio, that boatman of the Schiavoni, with
+the tale of what he had seen.  When the stricken Pope heard it, he
+ordered the bed of the river to be dragged foot by foot, with the
+result that the ill-starred Duke of Gandia was brought up in one of
+the nets, whereupon the heartless Sanazzaro coined his terrible
+epigram concerning that successor of Saint Peter, that Fisherman of
+Men.
+
+The people, looking about for him who had the greatest motive for
+that deed, were quick to fasten the guilt upon Giovanni Sforza, who
+by that time was far from Rome, riding hard for the shelter of his
+tyranny of Pesaro; and the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was also
+mentioned, and who feared to be implicated, apprehensive ever lest
+his page should have seen the betraying arms upon the ring of his
+masked visitor - fled also, nor could be induced to return save
+under a safe-conduct from the Holy Father, expressing conviction of
+his innocence.
+
+Later public rumour accused others; indeed, they accused in turn
+every man who could have been a possible perpetrator, attributing
+to some of them the most fantastic and incredible motives.  Once,
+prompted no doubt by their knowledge of the libertine,
+pleasure-loving nature of the dead Duke, rumour hit upon the
+actual circumstances of the murder so closely, indeed, that the
+Count of Mirandola's house was visited by the bargelli and subjected
+to an examination, at which Pico violently rebelled, appealing
+boldly to the Pope against insinuations that reflected upon the
+honour of his daughter.
+
+The mystery remained impenetrable, and the culprit was never brought
+to justice.  We know that in slaying Gandia, Giovanni Sforza vented
+a hatred whose object was not Gandia, but Gandia's father.  His aim
+was to deal Pope Alexander the cruellest and most lingering of
+wounds, and if he lacked the avenger's satisfaction of disclosing
+himself, at least he did not lack assurance that his blow had stricken
+home.  He heard - as all Italy heard - from that wayfarer on the
+bridge of Sant' Angelo, how the Pope, in a paroxysm of grief at sight
+of his son's body fished from the Tiber, had bellowed in his agony
+like a tortured bull, so that his cries within the castle were heard
+upon the bridge.  He learnt how the handsome, vigorous Pope staggered
+into the consistory of the 19th of that same month with the mien and
+gait of a palsied old man, and, in a voice broken with sobs,
+proclaimed his bitter lament:
+
+"Had we seven Papacies we would give them all to restore the Duke to
+life."
+
+He might have been content.  But he was not.  That deep hate of his
+against those who had made him a thing of scorn was not so easily to
+be slaked.  He waited, spying his opportunity for further hurt.  It
+came a year later, when Gandia's brother, the ambitious Cesare
+Borgia, divested himself of his cardinalitial robes and rank,
+exchanging them for temporal dignities and the title of Duke of
+Valentinois.  Then it was that he took up the deadly weapon of
+calumny, putting it secretly about that Cesare was the murderer of
+his brother, spurred to it by worldly ambition and by other motives
+which involved the principal members of the family.
+
+Men do not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies.  The evil
+tale was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no better
+authority than the public voice, it was enshrined in chronicles by
+every scribbler of the day.  And for four hundred years that lie has
+held its place in history, the very cornerstone of all the execration
+that has been heaped upon the name of Borgia.  Never was vengeance
+more terrible, far-reaching, and abiding.  It is only in this
+twentieth century of ours that dispassionate historians have nailed
+upon the counter of truth the base coin of that accusation.
+
+
+
+
+XII.   THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE
+
+CASANOVA'S ESCAPE FROM THE PIOMBI
+
+
+Patrician influence from without had procured Casanova's removal in
+August of that year, 1756, from the loathsome cell he had occupied
+for thirteen months in the Piombi - so called from the leaded roof
+immediately above those prisons which are simply the garrets of the
+Doge's palace.
+
+That cell had been no better than a kennel seldom reached by the
+light of day, and so shallow that it was impossible for a man of
+his fine height to stand upright in it.  But his present prison was
+comparatively spacious and it was airy and well-lighted by a barred
+window, whence he could see the Lido.
+
+Yet he was desperately chagrined at the change, for he had almost
+completed his arrangements to break out of his former cell.  The
+only ray of hope in his present despair came from the fact that the
+implement to which he trusted was still in his possession, safely
+concealed in the upholstery of the armchair that had been moved with
+him into his present quarters.  That implement he had fashioned for
+himself with infinite pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches
+long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of
+the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise.
+Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly
+acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a sharp octagonal-pointed
+chisel or spontoon.
+
+It remained in his possession, but he saw no chance of using it now,
+for the suspicions of Lorenzo, the gaoler, were aroused, and daily
+a couple of archers came to sound the floors and walls.  True they
+did not sound the ceiling, which was low and within reach.  But it
+was obviously impossible to cut through the ceiling in such a manner
+as to leave the progress of the work unseen.
+
+Hence his despair of breaking out of a prison where he had spent
+over a year without trial or prospect of a trial, and where he seemed
+likely to spend the remainder of his days.  He did not even know
+precisely why he had been arrested.  All that Giacomo Casanova knew
+was that he was accounted a disturber of the public peace.  He was
+notoriously a libertine, a gamester, and heavily in debt: also - and
+this was more serious - he was accused of practising magic, as indeed
+he had done, as a means of exploiting to his own profit the credulity
+of simpletons of all degrees.  He would have explained to the
+Inquisitors of State of the Most Serene Republic that the books of
+magic found by their apparitors in his possession - "The Clavicula
+of Solomon," the "Zecor-ben," and other kindred works - had been
+collected by him as curious instances of human aberration.  But the
+Inquisitors of State would not have believed him, for the Inquisitors
+were among those who took magic seriously.  And, anyhow, they had
+never asked him to explain, but had left him as if forgotten in that
+abominable verminous cell under the leads, until his patrician
+friend had obtained him the mercy of this transfer to better quarters.
+
+This Casanova was a man of iron nerve and iron constitution.  Tall
+and well-made, he was boldly handsome, with fine dark eyes and dark
+brown hair.  In age he was barely one and twenty; but he looked
+older, as well he might, for in his adventurer's way he had already
+gathered more experience of life than most men gain in half a
+century.
+
+The same influence that had obtained him his change of cell had also
+gained him latterly the privilege - and he esteemed it beyond all
+else - of procuring himself books.  Desiring the works of Maffai,
+he bade his gaoler purchase them out of the allowance made him by
+the Inquisitors in accordance with the Venetian custom.  This
+allowance was graduated to the social status of each prisoner.  But
+the books being costly and any monthly surplus from his monthly
+expenditure being usually the gaoler's perquisite, Lorenzo was
+reluctant to indulge him.  He mentioned that there was a prisoner
+above who was well equipped with books, and who, no doubt, would be
+glad to lend in exchange.
+
+Yielding to the suggestion, Casanova handed Lorenzo a copy of
+Peteau's "Rationarium," and received next morning, in exchange,
+the first volume of Wolf.  Within he found a sheet bearing in six
+verses a paraphrase of Seneca's epigram, "Calamitosus est animus
+futuri anxius."  Immediately he perceived he had stumbled upon a
+means of corresponding with one who might be disposed to assist
+him to break prison.
+
+In reply, being a scholarly rascal (he had been educated for the
+priesthood), he wrote six verses himself.  Having no pen, he cut
+the long nail of his little finger to a point, and, splitting it,
+supplied the want.  For ink he used the juice of mulberries.  In
+addition to the verses, he wrote a list of the books in his
+possession, which he placed at the disposal of his fellow-captive.
+He concealed the written sheet in the spine of that vellum-bound
+volume; and on the title-page, in warning of this, he wrote the
+single Latin word "Latet."  Next morning he handed the book to
+Lorenzo, telling him that he had read it, and requesting the
+second volume.
+
+That second volume came on the next day, and in the spine of it
+a long letter, some sheets of paper, pens, and a pencil.  The
+writer announced himself as one Marino Balbi, a patrician and a
+monk, who had been four years in that prison, where he had since
+been given a companion in misfortune, Count Andrea Asquino.
+
+Thus began a regular and very full correspondence between the
+prisoners, and soon Casanova - who had not lived on his wits for
+nothing - was able to form a shrewd estimate of Balbi's character.
+The monk's letters revealed it as compounded of sensuality,
+stupidity, ingratitude, and indiscretion.
+
+"In the world," says Casanova, "I should have had no commerce with
+a fellow of his nature.  But in the Piombi I was obliged to make
+capital out of everything that came under my hands."
+
+The capital he desired to make in this instance was to ascertain
+whether Balbi would be disposed to do for him what he could not do
+for himself.  He wrote inquiring, and proposing flight.
+
+Balbi replied that he and his companion would do anything possible
+to make their escape from that abominable prison, but his lack of
+resource made him add that he was convinced that nothing was
+possible.
+
+"All that you have to do," wrote Casanova in answer, "is to break
+through the ceiling of my cell and get me out of this, then trust
+to me to get you out of the Piombi.  If you are disposed to make
+the attempt, I will supply you with the means, and show you the
+way."
+
+It was a characteristically bold reply, revealing to us the utter
+gamester that he was in all things.
+
+He knew that Balbi's cell was situated immediately under the leads,
+and he hoped that once in it he should be able readily to find a way
+through the roof.  That cell of Balbi's communicated with a narrow
+corridor, no more than a shaft for light and air, which was
+immediately above Casanova's prison.  And no sooner had Balbi
+written, consenting, than Casanova explained what was to do.  Balbi
+must break through the wall of his cell into the little corridor,
+and there cut a round hole in the floor precisely as Casanova had
+done in his former cell - until nothing but a shell of ceiling
+remained - a shell that could be broken down by half a dozen blows
+when the moment to escape should have arrived.
+
+To begin with, he ordered Balbi to purchase himself two or three
+dozen pictures of saints, with which to paper his walls, using as
+many as might be necessary for a screen to hide the hole he would be
+cutting.
+
+When Balbi wrote that his walls were hung with pictures of saints,
+it became a question of conveying the spontoon to him.  This was
+difficult, and the monk's fatuous suggestions merely served further
+to reveal his stupidity.  Finally Casanova's wits found the way.
+He bade Lorenzo buy him an in-folio edition of the Bible which had
+just been published, and it was into the spine of this enormous tome
+that he packed the precious spontoon, and thus conveyed it to Balbi,
+who immediately got to work.
+
+This was at the commencement of October.  On the 8th of that month
+Balbi wrote to Casanova that a whole night devoted to labour had
+resulted merely in the displacing of a single brick, which so
+discouraged the faint-hearted monk that he was for abandoning an
+attempt whose only result must be to increase in the future the
+rigour of their confinement.
+
+Without hesitation, Casanova replied that he was assured of success
+ - although he was far from having any grounds for any such
+assurance.  He enjoined the monk to believe him, and to persevere,
+confident that as he advanced he would find progress easier.  This
+proved, indeed, to be the case, for soon Balbi found the brickwork
+yielding so rapidly to his efforts that one morning, a week later,
+Casanova heard three light taps above his head - the preconcerted
+signal by which they were to assure themselves that their notions
+of the topography of the prison were correct.
+
+All that day he heard Balbi at work immediately above him, and again
+on the morrow, when Balbi wrote that as the floor was of the
+thickness of only two boards, he counted upon completing the job on
+the next day, without piercing the ceiling.
+
+But it would seem as if Fortune were intent upon making a mock of
+Casanova, luring him to heights of hope, merely to cast him down
+again into the depths of despair.  Just as upon the eve of breaking
+out of his former cell mischance had thwarted him, so now, when
+again he deemed himself upon the very threshold of liberty, came
+mischance again to thwart him.
+
+Early in the afternoon the sound of bolts being drawn outside froze
+his very blood and checked his breathing.  Yet he had the presence
+of mind to give the double knock that was the agreed alarm signal,
+whereupon Balbi instantly desisted from his labours overhead.
+
+Came Lorenzo with two archers, leading an ugly, lean little man of
+between forty and fifty years of age, shabbily dressed and wearing
+a round black wig, whom the tribunal had ordered should share
+Casanova's prison for the present.  With apologies for leaving
+such a scoundrel in Casanova's company, Lorenzo departed, and the
+newcomer went down upon his knees, drew forth a chaplet, and began
+to tell his beads.
+
+Casanova surveyed this intruder at once with disgust and despair.
+Presently his disgust was increased when the fellow, whose name
+was Soradici, frankly avowed himself a spy in the service of the
+Council of Ten, a calling which he warmly defended from the contempt
+universally - but unjustly, according to himself - meted out to it.
+He had been imprisoned for having failed in his duty on one occasion
+through succumbing to a bribe.
+
+Conceive Casanova's frame of mind - his uncertainty as to how long
+this monster, as he calls him, might be left in his company, his
+curbed impatience to regain his liberty, and his consciousness of
+the horrible risk of discovery which delay entailed!  He wrote
+to Balbi that night while the spy slept, and for the present their
+operations were suspended.  But not for very long.  Soon Casanova's
+wits resolved how to turn to account the weakness which he
+discovered in Soradici.
+
+The spy was devout to the point of bigoted, credulous superstition.
+He spent long hours in prayer, and he talked freely of his special
+devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and his ardent faith in miracles.
+
+Casanova - the arch-humbug who had worked magic to delude the
+credulous - determined there and then to work a miracle for Soradici.
+Assuming an inspired air, he solemnly informed the spy one morning
+that it had been revealed to him in a dream that Soradici's devotion
+to the Rosary was about to be rewarded; that an angel was to be sent
+from heaven to deliver him from prison, and that Casanova himself
+would accompany him in his flight.
+
+If Soradici doubted, conviction was soon to follow.  For Casanova
+foretold the very hour at which the angel would come to break into
+the prison, and at that hour precisely - Casanova having warned
+Balbi - the noise made by the angel overhead flung Soradici into
+an ecstasy of terror.
+
+But when, at the end of four hours, the angel desisted from his
+labours, Soradici was beset by doubts.  Casanova explained to him
+that since angels invariably put on the garb of human flesh when
+descending upon earth, they labour under human difficulties.  He
+added the prophecy that the angel would return on the last day of
+the month, the eve of All Saints'- two days later - and that he
+would then conduct them out of captivity.
+
+By this means Casanova ensured that no betrayal should be feared
+from the thoroughly duped Soradici, who now spent the time in
+praying, weeping, and talking of his sins and of the
+inexhaustibility of divine grace.  To make doubly sure, Casanova
+added the most terrible oath that if, by a word to the gaoler,
+Soradici should presume to frustrate the divine intentions, he
+would immediately strangle him with his own hands.
+
+On October 31st Lorenzo paid his usual daily visit early in the
+morning.  After his departure they waited some hours, Soradici
+in expectant terror, Casanova in sheer impatience to be at work.
+Promptly at noon fell heavy blows overhead, and then, in a cloud
+of plaster and broken laths, the heavenly messenger descended
+clumsily into Casanova's arms.
+
+Soradici found this tall, gaunt, bearded figure, clad in a dirty
+shirt and a pair of leather breeches, of a singularly unangelic
+appearance; indeed, he looked far more like a devil.
+
+When he produced a pair of scissors, so that the spy might cut
+Casanova's beard, which, like the angel's, had grown in captivity,
+Soradici ceased to have any illusions on the score of Balbi's
+celestial nature.  Although still intrigued - since he could not
+guess at the secret correspondence that had passed between Casanova
+and Balbi - he perceived quite clearly that he had been fooled.
+
+Leaving Soradici in the monk's care, Casanova hoisted himself
+through the broken ceiling and gained Balbi's cell, where the sight
+of Count Asquino dismayed him.  He found a middle-aged man of a
+corpulence which must render it impossible for him to face the
+athletic difficulties that lay before them; of this the Count
+himself seemed already persuaded.
+
+"If you think," was his greeting, as he shook Casanova's hand, "to
+break through the roof and find a way down from the leads, I don't
+see how you are to succeed without wings.  I have not the courage
+to accompany you," he added, "I shall remain and pray for you."
+
+Attempting no persuasions where they must have been idle, Casanova
+passed out of the cell again, and approaching as nearly as possible
+to the edge of the attic, he sat down where he could touch the roof
+as it sloped immediately above his head.  With his spontoon he
+tested the timbers, and found them so decayed that they almost
+crumbled at the touch.  Assured thereby that the cutting of a hole
+would be an easy matter, he at once returned to his cell, and there
+he spent the ensuing four hours in preparing ropes.  He cut up
+sheets, blankets, coverlets, and the very cover of his mattress,
+knotting the strips together with the utmost care.  In the end he
+found himself equipped with some two hundred yards of rope, which
+should be ample for any purpose.
+
+Having made a bundle of the fine taffeta suit in which he had been
+arrested, his gay cloak of floss silk, some stockings, shirts, and
+handkerchiefs, he and Balbi passed up to the other cell, compelling
+Soradici to go with them.  Leaving the monk to make a parcel of his
+belongings, Casanova went to tackle the roof.  By dusk he had made
+a hole twice as large as was necessary, and had laid bare the lead
+sheeting with which the roof was covered.  Unable, single-handed,
+to raise one of the sheets, he called Balbi to his aid, and between
+them, assisted by the spontoon, which Casanova inserted between the
+edge of the sheet and the gutter, they at last succeeded in tearing
+away the rivets.  Then by putting their shoulders to the lead they
+bent it upwards until there was room to emerge, and a view of the
+sky flooded by the vivid light of the crescent moon.
+
+Not daring in that light to venture upon the roof, where they would
+be seen, they must wait with what patience they could until midnight,
+when the moon would have set.  So they returned to the cell where
+they had left Soradici with Count Asquino.
+
+>From Balbi, Casanova had learnt that Asquino, though well supplied
+with money, was of an avaricious nature.  Nevertheless, since money
+would be necessary, Casanova asked the Count for the loan of thirty
+gold sequins.  Asquino answered him gently that, in the first place,
+they would not need money to escape; that, in the second, he had a
+numerous family; that, in the third, if Casanova perished the money
+would be lost; and that, in the fourth, he had no money.
+
+"My reply," writes Casanova, "lasted half an hour."
+
+"Let me remind you," he said in concluding his exhortation, "of your
+promise to pray for us, and let me ask you what sense there can be
+in praying for the success of an enterprise to which you refuse to
+contribute the most necessary means."
+
+The old man was so far conquered by Casanova's eloquence that he
+offered him two sequins, which Casanova accepted, since he was not
+in case to refuse anything.
+
+Thereafter, as they sat waiting for the moon to set, Casanova found
+his earlier estimate of the monk's character confirmed.  Balbi now
+broke into abusive reproaches.  He found that Casanova had acted in
+bad faith by assuring him that he had formed a complete plan of
+escape.  Had he suspected that this was a mere gambler's throw on
+Casanova's part, he would never have laboured to get him out of his
+cell.  The Count added his advice that they should abandon an
+attempt foredoomed to failure, and, being concerned for the two
+sequins with which he had so reluctantly parted, he argued the case
+at great length.  Stifling his disgust, Casanova assured them that,
+although it was impossible for him to afford them details of how
+he intended to proceed, he was perfectly confident of success.
+
+At half-past ten he sent Soradici -who had remained silent throughout
+ - to report upon the night.  The spy brought word that in another
+hour or so the moon would have set, but that a thick mist was rising,
+which must render the leads very dangerous.
+
+"So long as the mist isn't made of oil, I am content," said Casanova.
+"Come, make a bundle of your cloak.  It is time we were moving."
+
+But at this Soradici fell on his knees in the dark, seized Casanova's
+hands, and begged to be left behind to pray for their safety, since
+he would be sure to meet his death if he attempted to go with them.
+
+Casanova assented readily, delighted to be rid of the fellow.  Then
+in the dark he wrote as best he could a quite characteristic letter
+to the Inquisitors of State, in which he took his leave of them,
+telling them that since he had been fetched into the prison without
+his wishes being consulted, they could not complain that he should
+depart without consulting theirs.
+
+The bundle containing Balbi's clothes, and another made up of half
+the rope, he slung from the monk's neck, thereafter doing the same
+in his own case.  Then, in their shirt-sleeves, their hats on their
+heads, the pair of them started on their perilous journey, leaving
+Count Asquino and Soradici to pray for them.
+
+Casanova went first, on all fours, and thrusting the point of his
+spontoon between the joints of the lead sheeting so as to obtain a
+hold, he crawled slowly upwards.  To follow, Balbi took a grip of
+Casanova's belt with his right hand, so that, in addition to making
+his own way, Casanova was compelled to drag the weight of his
+companion after him, and this up the sharp gradient of a roof
+rendered slippery by the mist.
+
+Midway in that laborious ascent, the monk called to him to stop.
+He had dropped the bundle containing the clothes, and he hoped that
+it had not rolled beyond the gutter, though he did not mention which
+of them should retrieve it.  After the unreasonableness already
+endured from this man, Casanova's exasperation was such in that
+moment that, he confesses, he was tempted to kick him after this
+bundle.  Controlling himself, however, he answered patiently that
+the matter could not now be helped, and kept steadily amain.
+
+At last the apex of the roof was reached, and they got astride of
+it to breathe and to take a survey of their surroundings.  They
+faced the several cupolas of the Church of Saint Mark, which is
+connected with the ducal palace, being, in fact, no more than the
+private chapel of the Doge.
+
+They set down their bundles, and, of course, in the act of doing
+so the wretched Balbi must lose his hat, and send it rolling down
+the roof after the bundle he had already lost.  He cried out that
+it was an evil omen.
+
+"On the contrary," Casanova assured him patiently, "it is a sign
+of divine protection; for if your bundle or your hat had happened
+to roll to the left instead of the right it would have fallen into
+the courtyard, where it would be seen by the guards, who must
+conclude that some one is moving on the roof, and so, no doubt,
+would have discovered us.  As it is your hat has followed your
+bundle into the canal, where it can do no harm."
+
+Thereupon, bidding the monk await his return, Casanova set off
+alone on a voyage of discovery, keeping for the present astride
+of the roof in his progress.  He spent a full hour wandering along
+the vast roof, going to right and to left in his quest, but failing
+completely to make any helpful discovery, or to find anything to
+which he could attach a rope.  In the end it began to look as if,
+after all, he must choose between returning to prison and flinging
+himself from the roof into the canal.  He was almost in despair,
+when in his wanderings his attention was caught by a dormer window
+on the canal side, about two-thirds of the way down the slope of
+the roof.  With infinite precaution he lowered himself down the
+steep, slippery incline until he was astride of the little dormer
+roof.  Leaning well forward, he discovered that a slender grating
+barred the leaded panes of the window itself, and for a moment
+this grating gave him pause.
+
+Midnight boomed just then from the Church of Saint Mark, like a
+reminder that but seven hours remained in which to conquer this and
+further difficulties that might confront him, and in which to win
+clear of that place, or else submit to a resumption of his
+imprisonment under conditions, no doubt, a hundredfold more
+rigorous.
+
+Lying flat on his stomach, and hanging far over, so as to see what
+he was doing, he worked one point of his spontoon into the sash of
+the grating, and, levering outwards, he strained until at last it
+came away completely in his hands.  After that it was an easy matter
+to shatter the little latticed window.
+
+Having accomplished so much, he turned, and, using his spontoon as
+before, he crawled back to the summit of the roof, and made his way
+rapidly along this to the spot where he had left Balbi.  The monk,
+reduced by now to a state of blending despair, terror, and rage,
+greeted Casanova in terms of the grossest abuse for having left
+him there so long.
+
+"I was waiting only for daylight," he concluded, "to return to
+prison."
+
+"What did you think had become of me?" asked Casanova.
+
+"I imagined that you had tumbled off the roof."
+
+"And is this abuse the expression of your joy at finding yourself
+mistaken?"
+
+"Where have you been all this time?" the monk counter-questioned
+sullenly.
+
+"Come with me and you shall see."
+
+And taking up his bundle again, Casanova led his companion forward
+until they were in line with the dormer.  There Casanova showed him
+what he had done, and consulted him as to the means to be adopted
+to enter the attic.  It would be too risky for them to allow
+themselves to drop from the sill, since the height of the window
+from the floor was unknown to them, and might be considerable.  It
+would be easy for one of them to lower the other by means of the
+rope.  But it was not apparent how, hereafter, the other was to
+follow.  Thus reasoned Casanova.
+
+"You had better lower me, anyhow," said Balbi, without hesitation;
+for no doubt he was very tired of that slippery roof, on which a
+single false step might have sent him to his account.  "Once I am
+inside you can consider ways of following me."
+
+That cold-blooded expression of the fellow's egoism put Casanova
+in a rage for the second time since they had left their prison.
+But, as before, he conquered it, and without uttering a word he
+proceeded to unfasten the coil of rope.  Making one end of it
+secure under Balbi's arms, he bade the monk lie prone upon the
+roof, his feet pointing downwards, and then, paying out rope, he
+lowered him to the dormer.  He then bade him get through the
+window as far as the level of his waist, and wait thus, hanging
+over and supporting himself upon the sill.  When he had obeyed,
+Casanova followed, sliding carefully down to the roof of the
+dormer.  Planting himself firmly, and taking the rope once more,
+he bade Balbi to let himself go without fear, and so lowered him
+to the floor - a height from the window, as it proved, of some
+fifty feet.  This extinguished all Casanova's hopes of being able
+to follow by allowing himself to drop from the sill.  He was
+dismayed.  But the monk, happy to find himself at last off that
+accursed roof, and out of all danger of breaking his neck, called
+foolishly to Casanova to throw him the rope so that he might take
+care of it.
+
+"As may be imagined," says Casanova, "I was careful not to take
+this idiotic advice."
+
+Not knowing now what was to become of him unless he could discover
+some other means than those at his command, he climbed back again
+to the summit of the roof, and started off desperately upon another
+voyage of discovery.  This time he succeeded better than before.
+He found about a cupola a terrace which he had not earlier noticed,
+and on this terrace a hod of plaster, a trowel, and a ladder some
+seventy feet long.  He saw his difficulties solved.  He passed an
+end of rope about one of the rungs, laid the ladder flat along the
+slope of the roof, and then, still astride of the apex, he worked
+his way back, dragging the ladder with him, until he was once more
+on a level with the dormer.
+
+But now the difficulty was how to get the ladder through the window,
+and he had cause to repent having so hastily deprived himself of
+his companion's assistance.  He had got the ladder into position,
+and lowered it until one of its ends rested upon the dormer, whilst
+the other projected some twenty feet beyond the edge of the roof.
+He slid down to the dormer, and placing the ladder beside him, drew
+it up so that he could reach the eighth rung.  To this rung he made
+fast his rope, then lowered the ladder again until the upper end of
+it was in line with the window through which he sought to introduce
+it.  But he found it impossible to do so beyond the fifth rung, for
+at this point the end of the ladder came in contact with the roof
+inside, and could be pushed no farther until it was inclined
+downward.  Now, the only possible way to accomplish this was by
+raising the other end.
+
+It occurred to him that he might, by so attaching the rope as to
+bring the ladder across the window frame, lower himself hand over
+hand to the floor of the attic.  But in so doing he must have left
+the ladder there to show their pursuers in the morning, not merely
+the way they had gone, but for all he knew at this stage, the place
+where they might then be still in hiding.  Having come so far, at
+so much risk and labour, he was determined to leave nothing to
+chance.  To accomplish his object then, he made his way down to the
+very edge of the roof, sliding carefully on his stomach until his
+feet found support against the marble gutter, the ladder meanwhile
+remaining hooked by one of its rungs to the sill of the dormer.
+
+In that perilous position he lifted his end of the ladder a few
+inches, and so contrived to thrust it another foot or so through
+the window, whereby its weight was considerably diminished.  If he
+could but get it another couple of feet farther in he was sure that
+by returning to the dormer he would have been able to complete the
+job.  In his anxiety to do this and to obtain the necessary
+elevation, he raised himself upon his knees.
+
+But in the very act of making the thrust he slipped, and, clutching
+wildly as he went, he shot over the edge of the roof.  He found
+himself hanging there, suspended above that terrific abyss by his
+hands and his elbows, which had convulsively hooked themselves on
+to the edge of the gutter, so that he had it on a level with his
+breast.
+
+It was a moment of dread the like of which he was never likely to
+endure again in a life that was to know many perils and many
+hairbreadth escapes.  He could not write of it nearly half a
+century later without shuddering and growing sick with horror.
+
+A moment he hung there gasping, then almost mechanically, guided
+by the sheer instinct of self-preservation, he not merely attempted,
+but actually succeeded in raising himself so as to bring his side
+against the gutter.  Then continuing gradually to raise himself
+until his waist was on a level with the edge, he threw the weight
+of his trunk forward upon the roof, and slowly brought his right
+leg up until he had obtained with his knee a further grip of the
+gutter.  The rest was easy, and you may conceive him as he lay
+there on the roof's edge, panting and shuddering for a moment to
+regain his breath and nerve.
+
+Meanwhile, the ladder, driven forward by the thrust that had so
+nearly cost him his life, had penetrated another three feet
+through the window, and hung there immovable.  Recovered, he
+took up his spontoon, which he had placed in the gutter, and,
+assisted by it, he climbed back to the dormer.  Almost without
+further difficulty, he succeeded now in introducing the ladder
+until, of its own weight, it swung down into position.
+
+A moment later he had joined Balbi in the attic, and together
+they groped about in it the dark, until finding presently a door,
+they passed into another chamber, where they discovered furniture
+by hurtling against it.  Guided by a faint glimmer of light,
+Casanova made his way to one of the windows and opened it.  He
+looked out upon a black abyss, and, having no knowledge of the
+locality, and no inclination to adventure himself into unknown
+regions, he immediately abandoned all idea of attempting to climb
+down.  He closed the window again, and going back to the other
+room, he lay down on the floor, with the bundle of ropes for a
+pillow, to wait for dawn.
+
+And so exhausted was he, not only by the efforts of the past
+hours, and the terrible experience in which they had culminated,
+but also because in the last two days he had scarcely eaten or
+slept, that straightway, and greatly to Balbi's indignation and
+disgust, he fell into a profound sleep.
+
+He was aroused three and a half hours later by the clamours and
+shakings of the exasperated monk.  Protesting that such a sleep at
+such a time was a thing inconceivable, Balbi informed him that it
+had just struck five.
+
+It was still dark, but already there was a dim grey glimmer of
+dawn by which objects could be faintly discerned.  Searching,
+Casanova found another door opposite that of the chamber which
+they had entered earlier.  It was locked, but the lock was a poor
+one that yielded to half a dozen blows of the spontoon, and they
+passed into a little room beyond which by an open door they came
+into a long gallery lined with pigeon-holes stuffed with
+parchments, which they conceived to be the archives.  At the end
+of this gallery they found a short flight of stairs, and below
+that yet another, which brought them to a glass door.  Opening
+this, they entered a room which Casanova immediately identified
+as the ducal chancellery.  Descent from one of its windows would
+have been easy, but they would have found themselves in the
+labyrinth of courts and alleys behind Saint Mark's, which would
+not have suited them at all.
+
+On a table Casanova found a stout bodkin with a long wooden handle,
+the implement used by the secretaries for piercing parchments that
+were to be joined by a cord bearing the leaden seals of the Republic.
+He opened a desk, and rummaging in it, found a letter addressed to
+the Proveditor of Corfu, advising a remittance of three thousand
+sequins for the repair of the fortress.  He rummaged further,
+seeking the three thousand sequins, which he would have appropriated
+without the least scruple.  Unfortunately they were not there.
+
+Quitting the desk, he crossed to the door, not merely to find it
+locked, but to discover that it was not the kind of lock that would
+yield to blows.  There was no way out but by battering away one of
+the panels, and to this he addressed himself without hesitation,
+assisted by Balbi, who had armed himself with the bodkin, but who
+trembled fearfully at the noise of Casanova's blows.  There was
+danger in this, but the danger must be braved, for time was slipping
+away.  In half an hour they had broken down all the panel it was
+possible to remove without the help of a saw.  The opening they
+had made was at a height of five feet from the ground, and the
+splintered woodwork armed it with a fearful array of jagged teeth.
+
+They dragged a couple of stools to the door, and getting on to
+these, Casanova bade Balbi go first.  The long, lean monk folded
+his arms, and thrust head and shoulders through the hole; then
+Casanova lifted him, first by the waist, then by the legs, and so
+helped him through into the room beyond.  Casanova threw their
+bundles after him, and then placing a third stool on top of the
+other two, climbed on to it, and, being almost on a level with
+the opening, was able to get through as far as his waist, when
+Balbi took him in his arms and proceeded to drag him out.  But it
+was done at the cost of torn breeches and lacerated legs, and
+when he stood up in the room beyond he was bleeding freely from
+the wounds which the jagged edges of the wood had dealt him.
+
+After that they went down two staircases, and came out at last in
+the gallery leading to the great doors at the head of that
+magnificent flight of steps known as the Giant's Staircase.  But
+these doors - the main entrance of the palace - were locked, and,
+at a glance, Casanova saw that nothing short of a hatchet would
+serve to open them.  There was no more to be done.
+
+With a resignation that seemed to Balbi entirely cynical, Casanova
+sat down on the floor.
+
+"My task is ended," he announced.  "It is now for Heaven or Chance
+to do the rest.  I don't know whether the palace cleaners will come
+here to-day as it is All Saints', or to-morrow, which will be All
+Souls'.  Should any one come, I shall run for it the moment the
+door is opened, and you had best follow me.  If no one comes, I
+shall not move from here, and if I die of hunger, so much the worse."
+
+It was a speech that flung the monk into a passion.  In burning
+terms he reviled Casanova, calling him a madman, a seducer, a
+deceiver, a liar.  Casanova let him rave.  It was just striking six.
+Precisely an hour had elapsed since they had left the attic.
+
+Balbi, in his red flannel waistcoat and his puce-coloured leather
+breeches, might have passed for a peasant; but Casanova, in torn
+garments that were soaked in blood, presented an appearance that
+was terrifying and suspicious.  This he proceeded to repair.
+Tearing a handkerchief, he made shift to bandage his wounds, and
+then from his bundle he took his fine taffeta summer suit, which
+on a winter's day must render him ridiculous.
+
+He dressed his thick, dark brown hair as best he could, drew on a
+pair of white stockings, and donned three lace shirts one over
+another.  His fine cloak of floss silk he gave to Balbi, who looked
+for all the world as if he had stolen it.
+
+Thus dressed, his fine hat laced with point of Spain on his head,
+Casanova opened a window and looked out.  At once he was seen by
+some idlers in the courtyard, who, amazed at his appearance there,
+and conceiving that he must have been locked in by mistake on the
+previous day, went off at once to advise the porter.  Meanwhile,
+Casanova, vexed at having shown himself where he had not expected
+any one, and little guessing how excellently this was to serve his
+ends, left the window and went to sit beside the angry friar, who
+greeted him with fresh revilings.
+
+A sound of steps and a rattle of keys stemmed Balbi's reproaches
+in full flow.  The lock groaned.
+
+"Not a word," said Casanova to the monk, "but follow me."
+
+Holding his spontoon ready., but concealed under his coat, he
+stepped to the side of the door.  It opened, and the porter, who
+had come alone and bareheaded, stared in stupefaction at the
+strange apparition of Casanova.
+
+Casanova took advantage of that paralyzing amazement.  Without
+uttering a word, he stepped quickly across the threshold, and with
+Balbi close upon his heels, he went down the Giant's Staircase in
+a flash, crossed the little square, reached the canal, bundled Balbi
+into the first gondola he found there, and jumped in after him.
+
+"I want to go to Fusine, and quickly," he announced.  "Call another
+oarsman."
+
+All was ready, and in a moment the gondola was skimming the canal.
+Dressed in his unseasonable suit, and accompanied by the still
+more ridiculous figure of Balbi in his gaudy cloak and without a
+hat, he imagined he would be taken for a charlatan or an astrologer.
+
+The gondola slipped past the custom-house, and took the canal of
+the Giudecca.  Halfway down this, Casanova put his head out of the
+little cabin to address the gondolier in the poop.
+
+"Do you think we shall reach Mestre in an hour?"
+
+"Mestre?" quoth the gondolier.  "But you said Fusine."
+
+"No, no, I said Mestre - at least, I intended to say Mestre."
+
+And so the gondola was headed for Mestre by a gondolier who professed
+himself ready to convey his excellency to England if he desired it.
+
+The sun was rising, and the water assumed an opalescent hue.  It was
+a delicious morning, Casanova tells us, and I suspect that never had
+any morning seemed to that audacious, amiable rascal as delicious as
+this upon which he regained his liberty, which no man ever valued
+more highly.
+
+In spirit he was already safely over the frontiers of the Most
+Serene Republic, impatient to transfer his body thither, as he
+shortly did, through vicissitudes that are a narrative in themselves,
+and no part of this story of his escape from the Piombi and the
+Venetian Inquisitors of State.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.  THE NIGHT OF MASQUERADE
+
+THE ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS III OF SWEDEN
+
+
+Baron Bjelke sprang from his carriage almost before it had come to
+a standstill and without waiting for the footman to let down the
+steps.  With a haste entirely foreign to a person of his station
+and importance, he swept into the great vestibule of the palace,
+and in a quivering voice flung a question at the first lackey he
+encountered:
+
+"Has His Majesty started yet?"
+
+"Not yet, my lord."
+
+The answer lessened his haste, but not his agitation.  He cast off
+the heavy wolfskin pelisse in which he had been wrapped, and,
+leaving it in the hands of the servant, went briskly up the grand
+staircase, a tall, youthful figure, very graceful in the suit of
+black he wore.
+
+As he passed through a succession of ante-rooms on his way to the
+private apartments of the King, those present observed the pallor
+of his clean-cut face under the auburn tie-wig he affected, and the
+feverish glow of eyes that took account of no one.  They could not
+guess that Baron Bjelke, the King's secretary and favourite,
+carried in his hands the life of his royal master, or its equivalent
+in the shape of the secret of the plot to assassinate him.
+
+In many ways Bjelke was no better than the other profligate minions
+of the profligate Gustavus of Sweden.  But he had this advantage over
+them, that his intellect was above their average.  He had detected
+the first signs of the approach of that storm which the King himself
+had so heedlessly provoked.  He knew, as much by reason as by
+intuition, that, in these days when the neighbouring State of France
+writhed in the throes of a terrific revolution against monarchic and
+aristocratic tyranny, it was not safe for a king to persist in the
+abuse of his parasitic power.  New ideas of socialism were in the
+air.  They were spreading through Europe, and it was not only in
+France that men accounted it an infamous anachronism that the great
+mass of a community should toil and sweat and suffer for the benefit
+of an insolent minority.
+
+Already had there been trouble with the peasantry in Sweden, and
+Bjelke had endangered his position as a royal favourite by presuming
+to warn his master.  Gustavus III desired amusement, not wisdom,
+from those about him.  He could not be brought to realize the
+responsibilities which kingship imposes upon a man.  It has been
+pretended that he was endowed with great gifts of mind.  He may have
+been, though the thing has been pretended of so many princes that
+one may be sceptical where evidence is lacking.  If he possessed
+those gifts, he succeeded wonderfully in concealing them under a
+nature that was frivolously gay, dissolute, and extravagant.
+
+His extravagance forced him into monstrous extortions when only a
+madman would have wasted in profligacy the wealth so cruelly wrung
+from long-suffering subjects.  From extortion he was driven by his
+desperate need of money into flagrant dishonesty.  At a stroke of
+the pen he had reduced the value of the paper currency by one-third
+ - a reduction so violent and sudden that, whilst it impoverished
+many, it involved some in absolute ruin - and this that he might
+gratify his appetite for magnificence and enrich the rapacious
+favourites who shared his profligacy.
+
+The unrest in the kingdom spread.  It was no longer a question of
+the resentment of a more or less docile peasantry whose first
+stirrings of revolt were easily quelled.  The lesser nobility of
+Sweden were angered by a measure - following upon so many others
+ - that bore peculiarly heavily upon themselves; and out of that
+anger, fanned by one man - John Jacob Ankarstrom - who had felt the
+vindictive spirit of royal injustice, flamed in secret the
+conspiracy against the King's life which Bjelke had discovered.
+
+He had discovered it by the perilous course of joining the
+conspirators.  He had won their confidence, and they recognized that
+his collaboration was rendered invaluable by the position he held
+so near the King.  And in his subtle wisdom, at considerable danger
+to himself, Bjelke had kept his counsel.  He had waited until now,
+until the moment when the blow was about to fall, before making the
+disclosure which should not only save Gustavus, but enable him to
+cast a net in which all the plotters must be caught.  And he hoped
+that when Gustavus perceived the narrowness of his escape, and the
+reality of the dangers amid which he walked, he would consider the
+wisdom of taking another course in future.
+
+He had reached the door of the last ante-chamber, when a detaining
+hand was laid upon his arm.  He found himself accosted by a page
+ - the offspring of one of the noblest families in Sweden, and the
+son of one of Bjelke's closest friends, a fair-haired, impudent boy
+to whom the secretary permitted a certain familiarity.
+
+"Are you on your way to the King, Baron?" the lad inquired.
+
+"I am, Carl.  What is it?"
+
+"A letter for His Majesty - a note fragrant as a midsummer rose -
+which a servant has just delivered to me.  Will you take it?"
+
+"Give it to me, impudence," said Bjelke, the ghost of a smile
+lighting for a moment his white face.
+
+He took the letter and passed on into the last antechamber, which
+was empty of all but a single chamberlain-in-waiting.  This
+chamberlain bowed respectfully to the Baron.
+
+"His Majesty?" said Bjelke.
+
+"He is dressing.  Shall I announce Your Excellency?"
+
+"Pray do."
+
+The chamberlain vanished, and Bjelke was left alone.  Waiting, he
+stood there, idly fingering the scented note he had received from
+the page.  As he turned it in his fingers the superscription came
+uppermost, and he turned it no more.  His eyes lost their absorbed
+look, their glance quickened into attention, a frown shaped itself
+between them like a scar; his breathing, suspended a moment, was
+renewed with a gasp.  He stepped aside to a table bearing a score
+of candles clustered in a massive silver branch, and held the note
+so that the light fell full upon the writing.
+
+Standing thus, he passed a hand over his eyes and stared again, two
+hectic spots burning now in his white cheeks.  Abruptly, disregarding
+the superscription, his trembling fingers snapped the blank seal and
+unfolded the letter addressed to his royal master.  He was still
+reading when the chamberlain returned to announce that the King was
+pleased to see the Baron at once.  He did not seem to hear the
+announcement.  His attention was all upon the letter, his lips drawn
+back from his teeth in a grin, and beads of perspiration glistening
+upon his brow.
+
+"His Majesty - " the chamberlain was beginning to repeat, when he
+broke off suddenly.  "Your Excellency is ill?"
+
+"Ill?"
+
+Bjelke stared at him with glassy eyes.  He crumpled the letter in
+his hand and stuffed one and the other into the pocket of his black
+satin coat.  He attempted to laugh to reassure the startled
+chamberlain, and achieved a ghastly grimace.
+
+"I must not keep His Majesty waiting," he said thickly, and stumbled
+on, leaving in the chamberlain's mind a suspicion that His Majesty's
+secretary was not quite sober.
+
+But Bjelke so far conquered his emotion that he was almost his usual
+imperturbable self when he reached the royal dressing-room; indeed,
+he no longer displayed even the agitation that had possessed him
+when first he entered the palace.
+
+Gustavus, a slight, handsome man of a good height, was standing
+before a cheval-glass when Bjelke came in.  Francois, the priceless
+valet His Majesty had brought back from his last pleasure-seeking
+visit to pre-revolutionary Paris some five years ago, was standing
+back judicially to consider the domino he had just placed upon the
+royal shoulders.  Baron Armfelt whom the conspirators accused of
+wielding the most sinister of all the sinister influences that
+perverted the King's mind - dressed from head to foot in shimmering
+white satin, lounged on a divan with all the easy familiarity
+permitted to this most intimate of courtiers, the associate of all
+royal follies.
+
+Gustavus looked over his shoulder as he entered.
+
+"Why, Bjelke," he exclaimed, "I thought you had gone into the
+country!"
+
+"I am at a loss," replied Bjelke, "to imagine what should have given
+Your Majesty so mistaken an impression."  And he might have smiled
+inwardly to observe how his words seemed to put Gustavus out of
+countenance.
+
+The King laughed, nevertheless, with an affectation of ease.
+
+"I inferred it from your absence from Court on such a night.  What
+has been keeping you?"  But, without waiting for an answer, he
+fired another question.  "What do you say to my domino, Bjelke?"
+
+It was a garment embroidered upon a black satin ground with tongues
+of flame so cunningly wrought in mingling threads of scarlet and
+gold that as he turned about now they flashed in the candlelight,
+and seemed to leap like tongues of living fire.
+
+"Your Majesty will have a great success," said Bjelke, and to
+himself relished the full grimness of his joke.  For a terrible
+joke it was, seeing that he no longer intended to discharge the
+errand which had brought him in such haste to the palace.
+
+"Faith, I deserve it!" was the flippant answer, and he turned again
+to the mirror to adjust a patch on the left side of his chin.
+"There is genius in this domino, and it is not the genius of
+Francois, for the scheme of flames is my very own, the fruit of a
+deal of thought and study."
+
+There Gustavus uttered his whole character.  As a master of the
+revels, or an opera impresario, this royal rake would have been a
+complete success in life.  The pity of it was that the accident of
+birth should have robed him in the royal purple.  Like many another
+prince who has come to a violent end, he was born to the wrong
+metier.
+
+"I derived the notion," he continued, "from a sanbenito in a Goya
+picture."
+
+"An ominous garb," said Bjelke, smiling curiously.  "The garment of
+the sinner on his way to penitential doom."
+
+Armfelt cried out in a protest of mock horror, but Gustavus laughed
+cynically.
+
+"Oh, I confess that it would be most apt.  I had not thought of it."
+
+His fingers sought a pomatum box, and in doing so displaced a
+toilet-case of red morocco.  An oblong paper package fell from the
+top of this and arrested the King's attention.
+
+"Why, what is this?" He took it up - a letter bearing the
+superscription:
+
+To His MAJESTY THE KING
+SECRET AND IMPORTANT
+
+"What is this, Francois?" The royal voice was suddenly sharp.
+
+The valet glided forward, whilst Armfelt rose from the divan and,
+like Bjelke, attracted by the sudden change in the King's tone and
+manner, drew near his master.
+
+"How comes this letter here?"
+
+The valet's face expressed complete amazement.  It must have been
+placed there in his absence an hour ago, after he had made all
+preparations for the royal toilette.  It was certainly not there
+at the time, or he must have seen it.
+
+With impatient fingers Gustavus snapped the seal and unfolded the
+letter.  Awhile he stood reading, very still, his brows knit.
+
+Then, with a contemptuous "Poof!" he handed it to his secretary.
+
+At a glance Bjelke recognized the hand for that of Colonel Lillehorn,
+one of the conspirators, whose courage had evidently failed him in
+the eleventh hour.  He read:
+
+SIRE, - Deign to heed the warning of one who, not being in your
+service, nor solicitous of your favours, flatters not your crimes,
+and yet desires to avert the danger threatening you.  There is a
+plot to assassinate you which would by now have been executed but
+for the countermanding of the ball at the opera last week.  What
+was not done then will certainly be done to-night if you afford
+the opportunity.  Remain at home and avoid balls and public
+gatherings for the rest of the year; thus the fanaticism which
+aims at your life will evaporate.
+
+"Do you know the writing?" Gustavus asked.
+
+Bjelke shrugged.  "The hand will be disguised, no doubt," he
+evaded.
+
+"But you will heed the warning, Sire?" exclaimed, Armfelt, who had
+read over the secretary's shoulder, and whose face had paled in
+reading.
+
+Gustavus laughed contemptuously.  "Faith, if I were to heed every
+scaremonger, I should get but little amusement out of life."
+
+Yet he was angry, as his shifting colour showed.  The disrespectful
+tone of the anonymous communication moved him more deeply than its
+actual message.  He toyed a moment with a hair-ribbon, his nether
+lip thrust out in thought.  At last he rapped out an oath of
+vexation, and proffered the ribbon to his valet.
+
+"My hair, Francois," said he, "and then we will be going."
+
+"Going!"
+
+It was an ejaculation of horror from Armfelt, whose face was now as
+white as the ivory-coloured suit he wore.
+
+"What else?  Am I to be intimidated out of my pleasures?"  Yet that
+his heart was less stout than his words his very next question
+showed.  "Apropos, Bjelke, what was the reason why you countermanded
+the ball last week?"
+
+"The councillors from Gefle claimed Your Majesty's immediate
+attention," Bjelke reminded him.
+
+"So you said at the time.  But the business seemed none so urgent
+when we came to it.  There was no other reason in your mind - no
+suspicion?"
+
+His keen, dark blue eyes were fixed upon the pale masklike face of
+the secretary.
+
+That grave, almost stern countenance relaxed into a smile.
+
+"I suspected no more than I suspect now," was his easy equivocation.
+"And all that I suspect now is that some petty enemy is attempting
+to scare Your Majesty."
+
+"To scare me?" Gustavus flushed to the temples.  "Am I a man to be
+scared?"
+
+"Ah, but consider, Sire, and you, Bjelke," Armfelt was bleating.
+"This may be a friendly warning.  In all humility, Sire, let me
+suggest that you incur no risk; that you countermand the masquerade."
+
+"And permit the insolent writer to boast that he frightened the King?"
+sneered Bjelke.
+
+"Faith, Baron, you are right.  The thing is written with intent to
+make a mock of me."
+
+"But if it were not so, Sire?" persisted the distressed Armfelt.
+And volubly he argued now to impose caution, reminding the King of
+his enemies, who might, indeed, be tempted to go the lengths of
+which the anonymous writer spoke.  Gustavus listened, and was
+impressed.
+
+"If I took heed of every admonition," he said, "I might as well
+become a monk at once.  And yet - "  He took his chin in his hand,
+and stood thoughtful, obviously hesitating, his head bowed, his
+straight, graceful figure motionless.
+
+Thus until Bjelke, who now desired above all else the very thing he
+had come hot-foot to avert, broke the silence to undo what Armfelt
+had done.
+
+"Sire," he said, "you may avoid both mockery and danger, and yet
+attend the masquerade.  Be sure, if there is indeed a plot, the
+assassins will be informed of the disguise you are to wear.  Give
+me your flame-studded domino, and take a plain black one for
+yourself."
+
+Armfelt gasped at the audacity of the proposal,
+
+but Gustavus gave no sign that he had heard.  He continued standing
+in that tense attitude, his eyes vague and dreamy.  And as if to
+show along what roads of thought his mind was travelling, he uttered
+a single word a name - in a questioning voice scarce louder than a
+whisper.
+
+Ankarstrom?
+
+Later again he was to think of Ankarstrom, to make inquiries
+concerning him, which justifies us here in attempting to follow
+those thoughts of his.  They took the road down which his conscience
+pointed.  Above all Swedes he had cause to fear John Jacobi
+Ankarstrom, for, foully as he had wronged many men in his time, he
+had wronged none more deeply than that proud, high-minded nobleman.
+He hated Ankarstrom as we must always hate those whom we have
+wronged, and he hated him the more because he knew himself despised
+by Ankarstrom with a cold and deadly contempt that at every turn
+proclaimed itself.
+
+That hatred was more than twenty years old.  It dated back to the
+time when Gustavus had been a vicious youth, and Ankarstrom himself
+a boy.  They were much of an age.  Gustavus had put upon his young
+companion an infamous insult, which had been answered by a blow.
+His youth and the admitted provocation alone had saved Ankarstrom
+from the dread consequence of striking a Prince of the Royal Blood.
+But they had not saved him from the vindictiveness of Gustavus.
+He had kept his lust of vengeance warm, and very patiently had he
+watched and waited for his opportunity to destroy the man, who had
+struck him.
+
+That chance had come four years ago - in 1788 - during the war with
+Russia.  Ankarstrom commanded the forces defending the island of
+Gothland.  These forces were inadequate for the task, nor was the
+island in a proper state of defence, being destitute of forts.  To
+have persevered in resistance might have been heroic, but it would
+have been worse than futile, for not only would it have entailed
+the massacre of the garrison, but it must have further subjected
+the inhabitants to all the horrors of sack and pillage.
+
+In the circumstances, Ankarstrom had conceived it his duty to
+surrender to the superior force of Russia, thereby securing immunity
+for the persons and property of the inhabitants.  In this the King
+perceived his chance to indulge his hatred.  He caused Ankarstrom
+to be arrested and accused of high treason, it being alleged against
+him that he had advised the people of Gothland not to take up arms
+against the Russians.  The royal agents found witnesses to bear
+false evidence against Ankarstrom, with the result that he was
+sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment in a fortress.  But the
+sentence was never carried out.  Gustavus had gone too far, as he
+was soon made aware.  The feelings against him which hitherto had
+smouldered flamed out at this crowning act of injustice, and to
+repair his error Gustavus made haste, not, indeed, to exonerate
+Ankarstrom from the charges brought against him, but to pardon him
+for his alleged offences.
+
+When the Swedish nobleman was brought to Court to receive this
+pardon, he used it as a weapon against the King whom he despised.
+
+"My unjust judges," he announced in a ringing voice, the echoes of
+which were carried to the ends of Sweden, "have never doubted in
+their hearts my innocence of the charges brought against me, and
+established by means of false witnesses.  The judgment pronounced
+against me was unrighteous.  This exemption from it is my proper
+due.  Yet I would rather perish through the enmity of the King than
+live dishonoured by his clemency."
+
+Gustavus had set his teeth in rage when those fierce words were
+reported to him, and his rage had been increased when he was
+informed of the cordial reception which everywhere awaited Ankarstrom
+on his release.  He perceived how far he had overshot his mark, and
+how, in seeking treacherously to hurt Ankarstrom, he had succeeded
+only in hurting himself.  Nor had he appeased the general indignation
+by his pardon.  True, the flame of revolt had been quelled.  But he had
+no lack of evidence that the fire continued to burn steadily in secret,
+and to eat its way further and further into the ranks of noble and
+simple alike.
+
+It is little wonder, then, that in this moment, with that warning
+lying there before him, the name of Ankarstrom should be on his lips,
+the thought of Ankarstrom, the fear of Ankarstrom, looming big in
+his mind.  It was big enough to make him heed the warning.  He
+dropped into a chair.
+
+"I will not go," he said, and Bjelke saw that his face was white,
+his hands shaking.
+
+But when the secretary had repeated the proposal which had earlier
+gone unheard, Gustavus caught at it with sudden avidity, and with
+but little concern for the danger that Bjelke might be running.  He
+sprang up, applauding it.  If a conspiracy there was, the
+conspirators would thus be trapped; if there were no conspiracy,
+then this attempt to frighten him should come to nothing; thus he
+would be as safe from the mockery of his enemies as from their
+knives.  Nor did Armfelt protest or make further attempts to
+dissuade him from going.  In the circumstances proposed by Bjelke,
+the risk would be Bjelke's, a matter which troubled Armfelt not at
+all; indeed, he had no cause to love Bjelke, in whom he beheld a
+formidable rival, and it would be to him no cause for tears if the
+knife intended for the royal vitals should find its way into
+Bjelke's instead.
+
+So Baron Bjelke, arrayed in the domino copied from the penitential
+sack, departed for the Opera House, leaving Gustavus to follow.
+Yet, despite the measure of precaution, no sooner had the masked
+King himself entered the crowded theatre, leaning upon the arm of
+the Count of Essen, than he conceived that he beheld confirmation
+of the warning, and regretted that he had not heeded it to the
+extent of remaining absent.  For one of the first faces he beheld,
+one of the few unmasked faces in that brilliantly lit salon, was
+the face of Ankarstrom, and Ankarstrom appeared to be watching the
+entrance.
+
+Gustavus checked in his stride, a tremor ran through him, and he
+stiffened in his sudden apprehension, for the sight of the tall
+figure and haughty, resolute face of the nobleman he had wronged
+was of more significance than at first might seem.  Ever since his
+infamous trial Ankarstrom had been at pains to seize every occasion
+of marking his contempt for his Prince.  Never did he fail upon the
+King's appearance in any gathering of which he was a member to
+withdraw immediately; and never once had he been known deliberately
+to attend any function which was to be graced by the presence of
+Gustavus.  How, then, came he here to this ball given by the King's
+own command unless he came for the fell purpose of which the letter
+had given warning?
+
+The King's impulse was to withdraw immediately.  He was taken by a
+curious, an almost unreasoning, fear that was quite foreign to him,
+who, for all his faults, had never yet lacked courage.  But, even
+as he hesitated, a figure swept past him in a domino flecked with
+flames, surrounded by revellers of both sexes, and he remembered
+that if Ankarstrom were bent on evil his attention would be held by
+that figure before which the crowd fell back, and opened out
+respectfully, believing it to be the King's.  Yet none the less it
+was Gustavus himself that Ankarstrom continued to regard in such a
+ay that the King had a feeling that his mask was made of glass.
+
+And then quite suddenly, even as he was on the point of turning,
+another wave of revellers swept frantically up, and in a moment
+Gustavus and the Count of Essen were surrounded.  Another moment
+and the buffeting crowd had separated him from his grand equerry.
+He found himself alone in the centre of this knot of wild fellows
+who, seeming to mistake him for one of themselves, forced him
+onward with them in their career.  For a moment he attempted to
+resist.  But as well might he have resisted a torrent.  Their rush
+was not to be stemmed.  It almost swept him from his feet, and to
+save himself he must perforce abandon himself to the impetus.  Thus
+he was swirled away across the floor of the amphitheatre, helpless
+as a swimmer in strong waters, and with the fear of the drowning
+clutching now at his heart.
+
+He had an impulse to unmask, proclaim himself, and compel the
+respect that was his due.  But to do so might be to expose himself
+to the very danger of whose presence he was now convinced.  His
+only hope must lie in allowing himself to be borne passively along
+until a chance opening allowed him to escape from these madmen.
+
+The stage had been connected with the floor of the theatre by a
+broad flight of wooden steps.  Up this flight he was carried by that
+human wave.  But on the stage itself he found an anchorage at last
+against one of the wings.  Breathing hard, he set his back to it,
+waiting for the wave to sweep on and leave him.  Instead, it paused
+and came to rest with him, and in that moment some one touched him
+on the shoulder.  He turned his head, and looked into the set face
+of Ankarstrom, who was close behind him.  Then a burning, rending
+pain took him in his side, and he grew sick and dizzy.  The uproar
+of voices became muffled; the lights were merged into a luminous
+billow that swelled and shrank and then went out altogether.
+
+The report of the pistol had been lost in the general din to all but
+those who stood near the spot where it had been fired.  And these
+found themselves suddenly borne backwards by the little crowd of
+maskers that fell away from the figure lying prone and bleeding on
+the stage.
+
+Voices were raised, shouting "Fire! Fire!"  Thus the conspirators
+sought to create confusion, that they might disperse and lose
+themselves in the general crowd.  That confusion, however, was very
+brief.  It was stemmed almost immediately by the Count of Essen,
+who leapt up the steps to the stage with a premonition of what had
+happened.  He stooped to rip away the mask from the face of the
+victim, and, beholding, as he had feared, the livid countenance of
+his King, he stood up, himself almost as pale.
+
+"Murder has been done!" he roared.  "Let the doors be closed and
+guarded, and let no one leave the theatre."  Instantly was his
+bidding done by the officers of the guard.
+
+Those of the King's household who were in attendance came forward
+now to raise Gustavus, and help to bear him to a couch.  There
+presently he recovered consciousness, whilst a physician was seeing
+to his hurt, and as soon as he realized his condition his manner
+became so calm that, himself, he took command of the situation.  He
+issued orders that the gates of the city should be closed against
+everybody, whilst himself apologizing to the Prussian minister who
+was near him for issuing that inconvenient but necessary order.
+
+"The gates shall remain closed for three days, sir," he announced.
+"During that time you will not be able to correspond with your Court;
+but your intelligence, when it goes, will be more certain, since by
+that time it should be known whether I can survive or not."
+
+His next order, delivered in a voice that was broken by his intense
+suffering, was to the chamberlain Benzelstjerna, commanding that
+all present should unmask and sign their names in a book before
+being suffered to depart.  That done, he bade them bear him home on
+the couch on which he had been placed that he might be spared the
+agony of more movement than was necessary.
+
+Thus his grenadiers bore him on their shoulders, lighted by torches,
+through the streets that were now thronged, for the rumour had now
+gone forth that the King was dead, and troops had been called out
+to keep order.  Beside him walked Armfelt in his suit of shimmering
+white satin, weeping at once for his King and for himself, for he
+knew that he was of those who must fall with Gustavus.  And, knowing
+this, there was bitter rage in his heart against the men who had
+wrought this havoc, a rage that sharpened his wits to an unusual
+acuteness.
+
+At last the King was once more in his apartments awaiting the
+physicians who were to pronounce his fate, and Armfelt kept him
+company among others, revolving in his mind the terrible suspicion
+he had formed.
+
+Presently came Duke Charles, the King's brother, and Benzelstjerna
+with the list of those who had been present at the ball.
+
+"Tell me," he asked, before the list was read to him, "is the name
+of Ankarstrom included in it?"
+
+"He was the last to sign, Sire," replied the chamberlain.
+
+The King smiled grimly.  "Tell Lillesparre to have him arrested and
+questioned."
+
+Armfelt flung forward.  "There is another who should be arrested,
+too!" he cried fiercely.  And added, "Bjelke!"
+
+"Bjelke?"
+
+The King echoed the name almost in anger at the imputation.  Armfelt
+spoke torrentially.  "It was he persuaded you to go against your own
+judgment when you had the warning, and at last induced you to it by
+offering to assume your own domino.  If the assassins sought the
+King, how came they to pass over one who wore the King's domino, and
+to penetrate your own disguise that was like a dozen others?
+Because they were informed of the change.  But by whom - by whom?
+Who was it knew?"
+
+"My God!" groaned the unfortunate King, who had in his time broken
+faith with so many, and was now to suffer the knowledge of this
+broken faith in one whom he had trusted above all others.
+
+Baron Bjelke was arrested an hour later, arrested in the very act
+of entering his own home.  The men of Lillesparre's police had
+preceded him thither to await his return.  He was quite calm when
+they surged suddenly about him, laid hands upon him, and formally
+pronounced him their prisoner.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "it was to have been inferred.  Allow me to
+take my leave of the Baroness, and I shall be at your disposal."
+
+"My orders, Baron, are explicit," he was answered by the officer in
+charge.  "I am not to suffer you out of my sight."
+
+"How?  Am I to be denied so ordinary a boon?"  His voice quivered
+with sudden anger and something else.
+
+"Such are my orders, Baron."
+
+Bjelke pleaded for five minutes' grace for that leavetaking.  But
+the officer had his orders.  He was no more than a machine.  The
+Baron raised his clenched hands in mute protest to the heavens,
+then let them fall heavily.
+
+"Very well," he said, and suffered them to thrust him back into his
+carriage and carry him away to the waiting Lillesparre.
+
+He found Armfelt in the office of the chief of the police, haranguing
+Ankarstrom, who was already there under arrest.  The favourite broke
+off as Bjelke was brought in.
+
+"You were privy to this infamy, Bjelke," he cried.  "If the King
+does not recover - "
+
+"He will not recover."  It was the cold, passionless voice of
+Ankarstrom that spoke.  "My pistol was loaded with rusty nails.  I
+intended to make quite sure of ridding my country of that perjured
+tyrant."
+
+Armfelt stared at the prisoner a moment with furious, bloodshot eyes.
+Then he broke into imprecations, stemmed only when Lillesparre
+ordered Ankarstrom to be removed.  When he was gone, the chief of
+police turned to Bjelke.
+
+"It grieves me, Baron, that we should meet thus, and it is with
+difficulty that I can believe what is alleged against you.  Baron
+Armfelt is perhaps rendered hasty by his grief and righteous anger.
+But I hope that you will be able to explain - at least to deny your
+concern in this horrible deed."
+
+Very tense and white stood Bjelke.
+
+"I have an explanation that should satisfy you as a man of honour,"
+he said quietly, "but not as chief of the police.  I joined this
+conspiracy that I might master its scope and learn the intentions
+of the plotters.  It was a desperate thing I did out of love and
+loyalty to the King, and I succeeded.  I came to-night to the
+palace with information which should not only have saved the King's
+life, but would have enabled him to smother the conspiracy for all
+time.  On the threshold of his room this letter for the King was
+delivered into my hands.  Read it, Lillesparre, that you may know
+precisely what manner of master you serve, that you may understand
+how Gustavus of Sweden recompenses love and loyalty.  Read it, and
+tell me how you would have acted in my place!"
+
+And he flung the letter on to the writing-table at which sat
+Lillesparre.
+
+The chief of police took it up, began to read, turned back to the
+superscription, then resumed his reading, a dull flush overspreading
+his face.  Over his shoulder Armfelt, too, was reading.  But Bjelke
+cared not.  Let all the world behold that advertisement of royal
+infamy, that incriminating love-letter from Bjelke's wife to the
+King who had dishonoured him.
+
+Lillesparre was stricken dumb.  He dared not raise his eyes to meet
+the glance of the prisoner.  But the shameless Armfelt sucked in a
+breath of understanding.
+
+"You admit your guilt, then?" he snarled.
+
+"That I sent the monster to the masquerade, knowing that there the
+blessed hand of Ankarstrom would give him his passport out of a
+world he had befouled - yes."
+
+"The rack shall make you yield the name of every one of the
+conspirators."
+
+"The rack!" Bjelke smiled disdainfully, and shrugged.  "Your men,
+Lillesparre, were very prompt and very obdurate.  They would not
+allow me to take leave of the Baroness, so that she has escaped me.
+But I am not sure that it is not a fitter vengeance to let her live
+and remember.  That letter may now be delivered to the King, for
+whom it is intended.  Its fond messages may lighten the misery of
+his remaining hours."
+
+His face was contorted, with rage, thought Armfelt, who watched him,
+but in reality with pain caused by the poison that was corroding
+his vitals.  He had drained a little phial just before stepping into
+the presence of Lillesparre, as they discovered upon inquiries made
+after he had collapsed dead at their feet.
+
+This caused them to bring back Ankarstrom, that he might be searched,
+lest he, too, should take some similar way of escaping them.  When
+he search was done, having discovered nothing, Lillesparre commanded
+that he should not have knife or fork or metal comb, or anything
+with which he might take his life.
+
+"You need not fear that I shall seek to evade the sacrifice," he
+assured them, his demeanour haughty, his eyes aglow with fanatic
+zeal.  "It is the price I pay for having rid Nature of a monster
+and my country of a false, perjured tyrant, and I pay it gladly."
+As he ceased he smiled, and drew from the gold lace of his sleeve
+a surgeon's lancet.  "This was supplied me against my need to open
+a vein.  But the laws of God and man may require my death upon the
+scaffold."
+
+And, smiling, he placed the lancet on Lillesparre's table.
+
+Upon his conviction execution followed, and it lasted three days -
+from April 19th to 21 st - being attended by all the horrible and
+gradual torturings reserved for regicides.  Yet possibly he did
+not suffer more than his victim, whose agony had lasted for
+thirteen days, and who perished miserably in the consciousness that
+he deserved his fate, whilst Ankarstrom was uplifted and fortified
+by his fanaticism.
+
+The scaffold was erected on the Stora Torget, facing the Opera House
+of Stockholm, where the assassination had taken place.  Thence the
+dismembered remains of Ankarstrom were conveyed to the ordinary
+gallows in the suburb of Sodermalm to be exhibited, the right hand
+being nailed below the head.  Under this hand on the morrow was
+found a tablet bearing the legend:
+
+     Blessed the hand
+     That saved the Fatherland.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Historical Nights' Entertainment, by Sabatini
+
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