y to inconvenience him, he was lifted upon a billiard-table,
from which extraordinary eminence he received their compliments and
congratulations upon the murder to which he had been accessory only an
hour before; and which the First President of the Parliament of Paris
(whose extreme haste to pay his court to his new master was such that,
being unable immediately to procure a carriage, he proceeded to the
Louvre on foot) designated _his happy deliverance_.[286] Nothing, in
short, but plumed hats sweeping the marble floor, flexile forms bending
to the earth, and lips wreathed in smiles, was to be seen in the kingly
hall in which Henri IV had loved to discuss grave topics with his sturdy
minister, the Duc de Sully, and which Marie de Medicis, in her day of
pride and power, had enriched with the glorious productions of her
immortal _protege_, Rubens the painter-prince, as she was wont to call
him. None cared to remember at that moment that Henry the Great was in
his grave, and that his royal widow had been sacrificed to the
insatiable ambition and the quenchless hate of a low-born minion.

But it is now time that we should return to the Queen-mother.

Alarmed by the report of firearms within the boundary of the palace,
Marie de Medicis, who had not yet completed her toilet, desired Caterina
Selvaggio to throw open one of the windows, and to demand the cause of
so singular and unpardonable an infraction of the law. She was obeyed;
and the Italian waiting-woman no sooner perceived De Vitry advancing
below the apartments of her royal mistress than she inquired of him what
had occurred.

"The Marechal d'Ancre has been shot," was his abrupt reply.

"Shot!" echoed Caterina; "and by whom?"

"By myself," said De Vitry composedly; "and by the command of the King."

"Madame!" exclaimed the terrified attendant, as she rushed to the side
of the Queen-mother, "M. le Marechal has been killed by order of
his Majesty."

Marie de Medicis started from her seat; her cheeks were blanched, her
lips quivered, and she wrung her hands convulsively, as she gasped out,
"I have reigned seven years. I must now think only of a crown
in heaven."

Her attendants, stupified with terror, rapidly gathered round her; and
ere long she learnt that her guards had been disarmed, and replaced by
those of the King. She listened vaguely to each successive report, and
paced the room with rapid but uncertain steps. At length she exclaimed
vehemently, "I do