about the passages. After a time, however, while sitting with the
CONCIERGE'S wife, she heard such frightful whispers from men with white
badges, who were admitted one by one by the porter, and all led silently
to a small lower room, that she resolved on seeking out the Baron's
servant, and sending him to warn his master, while she would take up her
station at her lady's door. She found Osbert, and with him was ascending
a narrow spiral leading from the offices--she, unfortunately, the
foremost. As she came to the top, a scuffle was going on--four men
had thrown themselves upon one, and a torch distinctly showed her the
younger Chevalier holding a pistol to the cheek of the fallen man, and
she heard the worlds, _'Le baiser d'Eustacie! Jet e barbouillerai ce
chien de visage,'_ and at the same moment the pistol was discharged. She
sprang back, oversetting, as she believed, Osbert, and fled shrieking to
the room of the CONCIERGE, who shut her in till morning.

'And how--how,' stammered Diane, 'should you know it was the Baron?'

Eustacie, with a death-like look, showed for a moment what even in her
swoon she had held clenched to her bosom, the velvet cap soaked with
blood.

'Besides,' added Veronique, resolved to defend her assertion, 'whom else
would the words suit? Besides, are not all the heretic gentlemen dead?
Why, as I sat there in the porter's room, I heard M. d'O call each one
of them by name, one after the other, into the court, and there the
white-sleeves cut them down or pistolled them like sheep for the
slaughter. They lie all out there on the terrace like so many carcases
at market ready for winter salting.'

'All slain?' said Eustacie, dreamily.

'All, except those that the King called into his own _garde robe_.'

'Then, I slew him!' Eustacie sank back.

'I tell you, child,' said Diane, almost angrily, 'he lives. Not a hair
of his head was to be hurt! The girl deceives you.'

But Eustacie had again become insensible, and awoke delirious,
entreating to have the door opened, and fancying herself still on the
revolving elysium, 'Oh, demons, have pity!' was her cry.

Diane's soothings were like speaking to the winds; and at last she saw
the necessity of calling in further aid; but afraid of the scandal that
the poor girl's raving accusations might create, she would not send
for the Huguenots surgeon, Ambroise Pare, whom the King had carefully
secured in his own apartments, but employed one of the barbe