m, whatever that doom might be. The
gentlemen in Henry's chamber did not venture to separate, and not an
eye was closed in sleep. They sat together in the deepest perplexity
and consternation, as the hours of the night lingered slowly along,
anxiously awaiting the developments with which the moments seemed to
be fraught.

In the mean time, aided by the gloom of a starless night, in every
street of Paris preparations were going on for the enormous
perpetration. Soldiers were assembling in different places of
rendezvous. Guards were stationed at important points in the city,
that their victims might not escape. Armed citizens, with loaded
muskets and sabres gleaming in the lamplight, began to emerge, through
the darkness, from their dwellings, and to gather, in motley and
interminable assemblage, around the Hotel de Ville. A regiment of
guards were stationed at the gates of the royal palace to protect
Charles and Catharine from any possibility of danger. Many of the
houses were illuminated, that by the light blazing from the windows,
the bullet might be thrown with precision, and that the dagger might
strike an unerring blow. Agitation and alarm pervaded the vast
metropolis. The Catholics were rejoicing that the hour of vengeance
had arrived. The Protestants gazed upon the portentous gatherings of
this storm in utter bewilderment.

All the arrangements of the enterprise were left to the Duke of Guise,
and a more efficient and fitting agent could not have been found. He
had ordered that the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, should be
tolled at two o'clock in the morning. Catharine and Charles, in one of
the apartments of the palace of the Louvre, were impatiently awaiting
the lingering flight of the hours till the alarm-bell should toll
forth the death-warrant of their Protestant subjects. Catharine,
inured to treachery and hardened in vice, was apparently a stranger to
all compunctious visitings. A life of crime had steeled her soul
against every merciful impression. But she was very apprehensive lest
her son, less obdurate in purpose, might relent. Though impotent in
character, he was, at times, petulant and self-willed, and in
paroxysms of stubbornness spurned his mother's counsels and exerted
his own despotic power.

Charles was now in a state of the most feverish excitement. He hastily
paced the room, peering out at the window, and almost every moment
looking at his watch, wishing that the hour would come, and