cepted so unwillingly!
But Margaret is ambitious for her husband, although she loves him not,
although she loves another: the two would wish to thwart her brothers
of their birthright, that she might wear their crown on her own brow.
Through her intervention, Henry of Navarre has escaped me. He has
outlived the massacre of that night of triumph, when all his party
perished; and now Charles loves him, and calls him 'upright, honest
Henry,' and if I contend not with all the last remnants of my broken
power, my foolish son, upon his death-bed, may place the regency in
his hands, and deprive his scorned and ill-used mother of her rights.
The regency! Ah! lies there the double crown? Ah! Ruggieri, Ruggieri,
why can you only tell me thus far and no further?"

"Madam," replied the wary astrologer, "the stars run in their slow
unerring course. We cannot compel their path; we can only read their
dictates."

Catherine de Medicis rose and approached the window, through which she
contemplated the face of the bright heavens.

"Mysterious orbs of light," she said, stretching forth her arms--"ye
who rule our destinies, roll on, roll on, and tarry not. Accomplish
your great task of fate; but be it quickly, that I may know what
awaits me in that secret scroll spread out above on which ye write the
future. Let me learn the good, that I may be prepared to greet it--the
ill, that I may know how to parry it."

Strange was the compound of that credulous mind, which, whilst it
sought in the stars the announcement of an inevitable fate, hoped to
find in its own resources the means of avoiding it--which, whilst it
listened to their supposed dictates as a slave, strove to command them
as a mistress.

"And the fourth horoscope that I have bid you draw?" said the Queen,
returning to the astrologer. "How stands it?"

"The star of your youngest son, the Duke of Alencon, is towering also
to its culminating point," replied the old man, looking over the
papers before him. "But it is nebulous and dim, and shines only by a
borrowed light--that of another star which rises with it to the
zenith. They both pursue the same path; and if the star of Alencon
reach that house of glory to which it tends, that other star will
shine with such a lustre as shall dim all other lights, however bright
and glorious they now may be."

"Ha! is it so?" said Catherine thoughtfully. "Alencon conspires also
to catch the tottering crown which falls from the dying head