enry! '_Verba volant_,' as my sister Margot
says; and had not all those"--and he pointed to the city with his
finger--"served me well, also? Were they not brave in battle, wise in
council, deeply devoted? They were all useful subjects--but they were
Huguenots, and I want none but Catholics."

Henry remained silent.

"Do you understand me now, Harry?" asked Charles.

"I understand, sire."

"Well?"

"Well, sire, I do not see why the King of Navarre should not do what so
many gentlemen and poor folk have done. For if they all die, poor
unfortunates, it is because the same terms have been proposed to them
which your Majesty proposes to me, and they have refused, as I refuse."

Charles seized the young prince's arm, and fixed on him a look the
vacancy of which suddenly changed into a fierce and savage scowl.

"What!" he said, "do you believe that I have taken the trouble to offer
the mass to those whose throats we are cutting yonder?"

"Sire," said Henry, disengaging his arm, "will you not die in the
religion of your fathers?"

"Yes, _par la mordieu_! and you?"

"Well, sire, I will do the same!" replied Henry.

Charles uttered a roar of rage and, with trembling hand, seized his
arquebuse, which lay on the table.

Henry, who stood leaning against the tapestry, with the perspiration on
his brow, and nevertheless, owing to his presence of mind, calm to all
appearance, followed every movement of the terrible king with the greedy
stupefaction of a bird fascinated by a serpent.

Charles cocked his arquebuse, and stamping with blind rage cried, as he
dazzled Henry's eyes with the polished barrel of the deadly gun:

"Will you accept the mass?"

Henry remained mute.

Charles IX. shook the vaults of the Louvre with the most terrible oath
that ever issued from the lips of man, and grew even more livid than
before.

"Death, mass, or the Bastille!" he cried, taking aim at the King of
Navarre.

"Oh, sire!" exclaimed Henry, "will you kill me--me, your brother?"

Henry thus, by his incomparable cleverness, which was one of the
strongest faculties of his organization, evaded the answer which Charles
IX. expected, for undoubtedly had his reply been in the negative Henry
had been a dead man.

As immediately after the climax of rage, reaction begins, Charles IX.
did not repeat the question he had addressed to the Prince of Navarre;
and after a moment's hesitation, during which he uttered a hoarse kind
of growl, he wen