column, turned to the road, while the cortege defiled
before Coligny's corpse.

The sun was sinking in the horizon.

The throng followed fast on their majesties so as to enjoy to the very
end all the splendors of the procession and the details of the
spectacle; the thieves followed the populace, so that in ten minutes
after the King's departure there was no person about the admiral's
mutilated carcass on which now blew the first breezes of the evening.

When we say no person, we err. A gentleman mounted on a black horse, and
who, doubtless, could not contemplate at his ease the black mutilated
trunk when it was honored by the presence of princes, had remained
behind, and was examining, in all their details, the bolts, stone
pillars, chains, and in fact the gibbet, which no doubt appeared to him
(but lately arrived in Paris, and ignorant of the perfection to which
things could be brought in the capital) the paragon of all that man
could invent in the way of awful ugliness.

We need hardly inform our friends that this man was M. Annibal de
Coconnas.

A woman's practised eye had vainly looked for him in the cavalcade and
had searched among the ranks without being able to find him.

Monsieur de Coconnas, as we have said, was standing ecstatically
contemplating Enguerrand de Marigny's work.

But this woman was not the only person who was trying to find Monsieur
de Coconnas. Another gentleman, noticeable for his white satin doublet
and gallant plume, after looking toward the front and on all sides,
bethought him to look back, and saw Coconnas's tall figure and the
silhouette of his gigantic horse standing out strongly against the sky
reddened by the last rays of the setting sun.

Then the gentleman in the white satin doublet turned out from the road
taken by the majority of the company, struck into a narrow footpath, and
describing a curve rode back toward the gibbet.

Almost at the same time the lady whom we have recognized as the Duchesse
de Nevers, just as we recognized the tall gentleman on the black horse
as Coconnas, rode alongside of Marguerite and said to her:

"We were both mistaken, Marguerite, for the Piedmontese has remained
behind and Monsieur de la Mole has gone back to meet him."

"By Heaven!" exclaimed Marguerite, laughing, "then something is going to
happen. Faith, I confess I should not be sorry to revise my opinion
about him."

Marguerite then turned her horse and witnessed the manoeuvre which