t back to the open window, and aimed at a man who was
running along the quay in front.

"I must kill some one!" cried Charles IX., ghastly as a corpse, his eyes
suffused with blood; and firing as he spoke, he struck the man who was
running.

Henry uttered a groan.

Then, animated by a frightful ardor, Charles loaded and fired his
arquebuse without cessation, uttering cries of joy every time his aim
was successful.

"It is all over with me!" said the King of Navarre to himself; "when he
sees no one else to kill, he will kill me!"

"Well," said a voice behind the princes, suddenly, "is it done?"

It was Catharine de Medicis, who had entered unobserved just as the King
was firing his last shot.

"No, thousand thunders of hell!" said the King, throwing his arquebuse
across the room. "No, the obstinate blockhead--he will not consent!"

Catharine made no reply. She turned her eyes slowly where Henry stood as
motionless as one of the figures of the tapestry against which he was
leaning. She then gave a glance at the King, which seemed to say:

"Then why he is alive?"

"He is alive, he is alive!" murmured Charles IX., who perfectly
understood the glance, and replied to it without hesitation,--"he is
alive--because he is my relative."

Catharine smiled.

Henry saw the smile, and realized that his struggle was to be with
Catharine.

"Madame," he said to her, "the whole thing comes from you, I see very
well, and my brother-in-law Charles is not to blame. You laid the plan
for drawing me into a snare. You made your daughter the bait which was
to destroy us all. You separated me from my wife that she might not see
me killed before her eyes"--

"Yes, but that shall not be!" cried another voice, breathless and
impassioned, which Henry instantly recognized and which made Charles
start with surprise and Catharine with rage.

"Marguerite!" exclaimed Henry.

"Margot!" said Charles IX.

"My daughter!" muttered Catharine.

"Sire," said Marguerite to Henry, "your last words were an accusation
against me, and you were both right and wrong,--right, for I am the
means by which they attempted to destroy you; wrong, for I did not know
that you were going to your destruction. I, sire, owe my own life to
chance--to my mother's forgetfulness, perhaps; but as soon as I learned
your danger I remembered my duty, and a wife's duty is to share her
husband's fortunes. If you are exiled, sire, I will follow you into
exile; if you a