the first."

Rene unfastened the body of the fowl from the altar and tossed it into a
corner; then he went to the other, which, foreseeing what its fate would
be by its companion's, tried to escape by running round the cell, and
finding itself pent up in a corner flew over Rene's head, and in its
flight extinguished the magic taper Catharine held.

"You see, Rene, thus shall our race be extinguished," said the queen;
"death shall breathe upon it, and destroy it from the face of the earth!
Yet three sons! three sons!" she murmured, sorrowfully.

Rene took from her the extinguished taper, and went into the adjoining
room to relight it.

On his return he saw the hen hiding its head in the tunnel.

"This time," said Catharine, "I will prevent the cries, for I will cut
off the head at once."

And accordingly, as soon as the hen was bound, Catharine, as she had
said, severed the head at a single blow; but in the last agony the beak
opened three times, and then closed forever.

"Do you see," said Catharine, terrified, "instead of three cries, three
sighs? Always three!--they will all three die. All these spirits before
they depart count and call three. Let us now see the prognostications in
the head."

She severed the bloodless comb from the head, carefully opened the
skull, and laying bare the lobes of the brain endeavored to trace a
letter formed in the bloody sinuosities made by the division of the
central pulp.

"Always so!" cried she, clasping her hands; "and this time clearer than
ever; see here!"

Rene approached.

"What is the letter?" asked Catharine.

"An H," replied Rene.

"How many times repeated?"

Rene counted.

"Four," said he.

"Ay, ay! I see it! that is to say, HENRY IV. Oh," she cried, flinging
the knife from her, "I am accursed in my posterity!"

She was terrible, that woman, pale as a corpse, lighted by the dismal
taper, and clasping her bloody hands.

"He will reign!" she exclaimed with a sigh of despair; "he will reign!"

"He will reign!" repeated Rene, plunged in meditation.

Nevertheless, the gloomy expression of Catharine's face soon disappeared
under the light of a thought which unfolded in the depths of her mind.

"Rene," said she, stretching out her hand toward the perfumer without
lifting her head from her breast, "Rene, is there not a terrible history
of a doctor at Perugia, who killed at once, by the aid of a pomade,[7]
his daughter and his daughter's lover?"

"Yes,