de for
him--if I have time."

CHAPTER LIV.

THE FOREST OF VINCENNES.

According to the order given by Charles IX., Henry was conducted that
same evening to Vincennes. Such was the name given at that time to the
famous castle of which to-day only a fragment remains, colossal enough,
however, to give an idea of its past grandeur.

The trip was made in a litter, on either side of which walked four
guards.

Monsieur de Nancey, bearing the order which was to open to Henry the
door of the protecting abode, walked first.

At the postern of the prison they stopped. Monsieur de Nancey dismounted
from his horse, opened the gate, which was closed with a padlock, and
respectfully asked the king to follow.

Henry obeyed without uttering a word. Any dwelling seemed to him safer
than the Louvre, and ten doors closed on him were at the same time ten
doors shut between him and Catharine de Medicis.

The royal prisoner crossed the drawbridge between two soldiers, passed
through the three doors on the ground floor and the three at the foot of
the staircase; then, still preceded by Monsieur de Nancey, he ascended
one flight. Arrived there, the captain of the guards, seeing that the
king was about to mount another flight, said to him:

"My lord, you are to stop here."

"Ah!" said Henry, pausing, "it seems that I am given the honors of the
first floor."

"Sire," replied Monsieur de Nancey, "you are treated like a crowned
head."

"The devil! the devil!" said Henry to himself, "two or three floors more
would in no way have humiliated me. I shall be too comfortable here; I
suspect something."

"Will your majesty follow me?" asked Monsieur de Nancey.

"_Ventre saint gris!_" said the King of Navarre, "you know very well,
monsieur, that it is not a question of what I will or will not do, but
of what my brother Charles orders. Did he command that I should follow
you?"

"Yes, sire."

"Then I will do so, monsieur."

They reached a sort of corridor at the end of which they came to a
good-sized room, with dark and gloomy looking walls. Henry gazed around
him with a glance not wholly free from anxiety.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"In the chamber of torture, my lord."

"Ah!" replied the king, looking at it more closely.

There was something of everything in this chamber--pitchers and wooden
horses for the torture by water; wedges and mallets for the torture of
the boot; besides stone benches nearly all around the roo