the king.
The apartment he occupied was on the ground floor, and the lighted
candles in the library enabled them to see their victim. Gustavus, on
his return from hunting, undressed, and fell asleep in an arm chair,
within a few feet of the assassins. Whether it was that they were
alarmed by the sound of footsteps, or that the solemn contrast of the
peaceful slumber of this prince with the death that threatened him,
softened their hearts, they again abandoned their project, and only
revealed this circumstance on their trial after the assassination, when
the king acknowledged the truth and precision of their details. They
were ready to renounce their intention, discouraged by a sort of divine
intervention, and by the fatigue of having so long meditated this design
in vain, when a fatal occasion tempted them too strongly, and made them
resolve on the murder of the king.

VI.

A masked ball was given at the opera, which the king was to attend, and
the conspirators resolved to take advantage of the mystery of the
disguise and tumult of the fete to strike the blow, without allowing the
hand to appear. A short time before the ball the king supped with a few
of his most intimate courtiers. A letter was brought to him, which he
opened, and reading it jestingly, then threw it on the table. The
anonymous writer informed him that he was neither a friend to his person
nor an approver of his policy, but that as a loyal enemy he desired to
inform him of the death that menaced him. He counselled him not to go
to the ball; or, if he persisted, he advised him to mistrust the crowd
that might press around him, for that was the signal for the blow to be
aimed at him. That the king might not doubt the warning thus given, he
recalled to his memory his dress, gesture, his sleep in his apartment of
Haga in the evening that he had believed himself quite alone. Such
convincing proofs must have struck and intimidated the mind of the
prince, but his intrepid soul made him brave, not only the warning, but
death: he rose and went to the ball.

VII.

Scarcely had he reached the apartment, when he was surrounded, as he had
been warned, by a group of masks, and separated, as if by preconcerted
movement, from the body of officers who were in attendance. At this
moment an invisible hand fired at his back a pistol loaded with slugs.
The blow struck him in the left flank above the hip. Gustavus fell into
the arms of Count d'Armsfeld, his favouri