AN-AUX-CHOUX TAKES HIS WAGES

CHAPTER XXXI. THE WAY OF THE SALT MARSHES

CHAPTER XXXII. IN THEIR CLUTCHES

CHAPTER XXXIII. AND ONE WAS NOT!

CHAPTER XXXIV. BISHOP, ARCHBISHOP, AND ANGELICAL DOCTOR

CHAPTER XXXV. THE PLACE OF EYES

CHAPTER XXXVI. VALENTINE LA NINA

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE WILD ANIMAL--WOMAN

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE VENGEANCE OF VALENTINE LA NINA

CHAPTER XXXIX. SAVED BY SULKS

CHAPTER XL. THE MAS OF THE MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER XLI. "AND LAZARUS CAME FORTH!"

CHAPTER XLII. SECRETS OF THE PRISON HOUSE

CHAPTER XLIII. IN TARRAGONA BAY

CHAPTER XLIV. VALENTINE AND HER VENGEANCE

CHAPTER XLV. VALENTINE FINDS CLAIRE WORTHY

CHAPTER XLVI. KING AND KING'S DAUGHTER

CHAPTER XLVII. GREAT LOVE--AND GREATER

AFTER THE CURTAIN

The White Plumes of Navarre

BEFORE THE CURTAIN RISES

The night was hot in Paris. Breathless heat had brooded over the city
all Saturday, the 23rd of August, 1572. It was the eve of Saint
Bartholomew. The bell of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois had just clashed out
the signal. The Louvre was one blaze of lights. Men with lanterns and
poleaxes, as if going to the shambles to kill oxen, hurried along the
streets.

Only in the houses in which were lodged the great Huguenot gentlemen,
come to the city for the marriage of the King's sister Marguerite to the
King of Navarre, there were darkness and silence. None had warned
them--or, at least, they had taken no warning. If any suspected, the
word of a King, his sworn oaths and multitudinous safe-conducts, lulled
them back again into security.

In one chamber, high above the courtyard, a light burned faint and
steady. It was that beside the bed of the great Admiral--Coligny. He had
been treacherously wounded by the arquebuse of one of the guard of the
King's brother--Monsieur de France, Henry Duke of Anjou, afterwards to
be known to history as Henry III., the favourite son of Catherine de
Medici, the cunningest, and the most ungrateful.

There watched by that bedside many grave men, holding grave discourse
with each other and with the sick man, concerning the high mysteries of
the religion, pure and reformed, of the state of France, and their hopes
of better days for the Faith as it had been delivered to the saints.

And at the bed-foot, with towels, bandages, and water in a silver salver
ready for service, one young lad, a student of Geneva, fresh from Calvin
and Beza, held his tongue and opened wide his ears.

"Pray, M