y dying, they still
sought to finish each other, sprang forward, preceded by the captain of
the guards. But before they reached the wounded men, the eyes of the
latter closed, their grasp was loosened, and, letting fall their weapons,
they stretched themselves out stiff and convulsed. A pool of blood had
already formed itself around them.

"Oh! brave, brave La Mole!" exclaimed Margaret, unable to repress her
admiration. "How can I forgive myself for having suspected you?" And her
eyes filled with tears.

"Alas! alas!" cried the duchess, sobbing violently. "Say, madam, did you
ever see such intrepid champions?"

"_Tudieu!_--What hard knocks!" exclaimed the captain, trying to stanch the
blood that flowed from the wounds. "Hola! you who are coming, come more
quickly."

A man, seated on the front of a sort of cart painted of a red colour, was
seen slowly approaching.

"Hola!" repeated the captain, "will you come, then, when you are called?
Do you not see that these gentlemen are in want of assistance?"

The man in the cart, whose appearance was in the highest degree coarse and
repulsive, stopped his horse, got down, and stepped over the two bodies.

"These are pretty wounds," said he, "but I make better ones."

"Who, then, are you?" said Margaret, experiencing, in spite of herself, a
vague and unconquerable sensation of terror.

"Madam," replied the man, bowing to the ground, "I an Maitre Caboche,
executioner of the city of Paris; and I am come to suspend to this gibbet
some companions for the admiral."

"And I am the Queen of Navarre; throw out your dead bodies, place our
horses' clothes in your cart, and bring these two gentlemen carefully to
the Louvre."

La Mole recovers from his wounds before Coconnas is out of danger. The
latter is, in great measure, restored to health through the care and
attention which his late antagonist generously lavishes on him; they
become intimate friends, and Coconnas is appointed to the household of the
Duke of Alencon, to which La Mole already belongs. The duke, out of
opposition to his brothers, the king and the Duke of Anjou, has a leaning
towards the Huguenot party. De Mouy, a Protestant leader, whose father has
been assassinated by Maurevel, comes in disguise to the Louvre, to
communicate with Henry of Navarre, in the sincerity of whose conversion
the Huguenots do not believe. Henry, however, who knows that the walls of
the Louvre have ears, refuses to listen to De Mouy, a