ing glance around, to see whose brows might be
frowning.

Perhaps of all that cortege, the person who was looked at with the
greatest curiosity was that motherless son, that kingless king, that
Huguenot turned Catholic. His long and marked countenance, his somewhat
vulgar figure, his familiarity with his inferiors, which he carried to a
degree almost derogatory to a king,--a familiarity acquired by the
mountaineer habits of his youth, and which he preserved till his
death,--marked him out to the spectators, some of whom cried:

"To mass, Harry, to mass!"

To which Henry replied:

"I attended it yesterday, to-day, and I shall attend it again to-morrow.
_Ventre saint gris!_ surely that is sufficient."

Marguerite was on horseback--so lovely, so fresh, so elegant that
admiration made a regular concert around her, though it must be
confessed that a few notes of it were addressed to her companion, the
Duchesse de Nevers, who had just joined her on a white horse so proud of
his burden that he kept tossing his head.

"Well, duchess!" said the Queen of Navarre, "what is there new?"

"Why, madame," replied the duchess, aloud, "I know of nothing."

Then in a lower tone:

"And what has become of the Huguenot?"

"I have found him a retreat almost safe," replied Marguerite. "And the
wholesale assassin, what have you done with him?"

"He wished to take part in the festivity, and so we mounted him on
Monsieur de Nevers' war-horse, a creature as big as an elephant. He is a
fearful cavalier. I allowed him to be present at the ceremony to-day, as
I felt that your Huguenot would be prudent enough to keep his chamber
and that there was no fear of their meeting."

"Oh, faith!" replied Marguerite, smiling, "if he were here, and he is
not here, I do not think a collision would take place. My Huguenot is
remarkably handsome, but nothing more--a dove, and not a hawk; he coos,
but does not bite. After all," she added, with a gesture impossible to
describe, and shrugging her shoulders slightly, "after all, perhaps our
King thought him a Huguenot while he is only a Brahmin, and his religion
forbids him to shed blood."

"But where, pray, is the Duc d'Alencon?" inquired Henriette; "I do not
see him."

"He will join us later; his eyes troubled him this morning and he was
inclined not to come, but as it is known that because he holds a
different opinion from Charles and his brother Henry he inclines toward
the Huguenots, he became co