The King and the great Huguenot leader came slowly down the gallery,
an oddly contrasting pair. Coligny would have been the taller by a
half-head but for his stoop, yet in spite of it there was energy and
military vigour in his carriage, just as there was a severe dignity
amounting to haughtiness in his scarred and wrinkled countenance. A
bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three of his teeth at the
battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that lost itself in his long
white beard. His forehead was high and bald, and his eyes were of
a steely keenness under their tufted brows. He was dressed with
Calvinistic simplicity entirely in black, and just as this contrasted
with the King's suit of sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of
his countenance contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign's.

Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was of
a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes, and a
thick, pendulous nose. The protruding upper lip of his long, thin mouth
gave him an oafish expression, which was increased by his habit of
carrying his head craned forward.

His nature was precisely what you would have expected from his
appearance--dull and gross. He was chiefly distinguished among men of
birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological inventiveness in
blasphemy.

At the end of the gallery Coligny stooped to kiss the royal hand in
leave-taking. With his other hand Charles patted the Admiral's shoulder.

"Count me your friend," he said, "body and soul, heart and bowels, even
as I count you mine. Fare you well, my father."

Coligny departed, and the King retraced his steps, walking quickly, his
head hunched between his shoulders, his baleful eyes looking neither to
left nor right. As he passed out, the Duke of Anjou quitted the side
of Madame de Nemours, and went after him. Then at last the suspended
chatter of the courtiers broke loose again.

The King was pacing his cabinet--a simple room furnished with a medley
of objects appertaining to study, to devotion, and to hunting. A large
picture of the Virgin hung from a wall flanked on either side by an
arquebus, and carrying a hunting-horn on one of its upper corners. A
little alabaster holy-water font near the door, crowned by a sprig of
palm, seemed to serve as a receptacle for hawk-bells and straps. There
was a writing-table of beautifully carved walnut near the leaded window,
littered with books an