are-toed slippers with
high heels, and, wrapped in a large silk dressing-gown, covered with
golden ornaments embroidered in relief, walked to and fro in his
bedroom, sending every minute a fresh lackey to see what was going on,
and ordering them immediately to go for the Abbe de la Riviere, his
general counsellor; but he was unfortunately out of Paris. At every
pistol-shot this timid Prince rushed to the windows, without seeing
anything but some flambeaux, which were carried quickly along. It was in
vain he was told that the cries he heard were in his favor; he did not
cease to walk up and down the apartments, in the greatest disorder-his
long black hair dishevelled, and his blue eyes open and enlarged by
disquiet and terror. He was still thus when Montresor and Fontrailles
at length arrived and found him beating his breast, and repeating a
thousand times, "Mea culpa, mea culpa!"

"You have come at last!" he exclaimed from a distance, running to meet
them. "Come! quick! What is going on? What are they doing there? Who are
these assassins? What are these cries?"

"They cry, 'Long live Monsieur!'"

Gaston, without appearing to hear, and holding the door of his chamber
open for an instant, that his voice might reach the galleries in
which were the people of his household, continued to cry with all his
strength, gesticulating violently:

"I know nothing of all this, and I have authorized nothing. I will not
hear anything! I will not know anything! I will never enter into any
project! These are rioters who make all this noise; do not speak to me
of them, if you wish to be well received here. I am the enemy of no man;
I detest such scenes!"

Fontrailles, who knew the man with whom he had to deal, said nothing,
but entered with his friend, that Monsieur might have time to discharge
his first fury; and when all was said, and the door carefully shut, he
began to speak:

"Monseigneur," said he, "we come to ask you a thousand pardons for the
impertinence of these people, who will persist in crying out that they
desire the death of your enemy, and that they would even wish to make
you regent should we have the misfortune to lose his Majesty. Yes, the
people are always frank in their discourse; but they are so numerous
that all our efforts could not restrain them. It was truly a cry from
the heart--an explosion of love, which reason could not restrain, and
which escaped all bounds."

"But what has happened, then?" interrupt