d, of whom he was fond, and who had left him
with a jest at eleven o'clock, little dreaming that it was for the last
time.

The three of them crossed to the window overlooking the river. They
opened it, and peered out fearfully. Even Catherine trembled now that
the hour approached. The air was fresh and cool, swept clean by the
stirring breeze of the dawn, whose first ghostly gleams were already in
the sky. Suddenly, somewhere near at hand, a pistol cracked. The noise
affected them oddly. The King fell into an ague and his teeth chattered
audibly. Panic seized him.

"By the Blood, it shall not be! It shall not be!" he cried suddenly.

He looked at his mother and his brother and they looked at him; ghastly
were the faces of all three, their eyes wide and staring with horror.

Charles swore in his terror that he would cancel all commands. And
since Catherine and Anjou made no attempt to hinder him, he summoned an
officer and bade him seek out the Duke of Guise at once and command him
to stay his hand.

The messenger eventually found the Duke in the courtyard of the
Admiral's house, standing over the Admiral's dead body, which his
assassins had flung down from the bedroom window. Guise laughed, and
stirred the head of the corpse with his foot, answering that the
message came too late. Even as he spoke the great bell of Saint-Germain
l'Auxerrois began to ring for matins.

The royal party huddled at that window of the Louvre heard it at the
same moment, and heard, as if in immediate answer, shots of arquebus
and pistol, cries and screams near at hand, and then, gradually swelling
from a murmur, the baying of the fierce multitude. Other bells gave
tongue, until from every steeple in Paris the alarm rang out. The red
glow from thousands of torches flushed the heavens with a rosy tint as
of dawn, the air grew heavy with the smell of pitch and resin.

The King, clutching the sill of the window, poured out a stream of
blasphemy from between his chattering teeth. Then the hubbub rose
suddenly near at hand. The neighbourhood of the Louvre was populous
with Huguenots, and into it now poured the excited Catholic citizens
and soldiers. Soon the quay beneath the palace windows presented the
fiercest spectacle of any quarter, of Paris.

Half-clad men, women, and children fled screaming before the assassins,
until they were checked by the chains that everywhere had been placed
across the streets. Some sought the river, hoping to