was not burned. There
is a chest of linen at Gil's, and a chest with your father's gold
lace--but that is pledged,' she added dreamily. 'I forgot.'

'Madame,' I answered solemnly, 'it shall be done--it shall be done as
you wish, if the power lie with me.'

She lay for some time after that murmuring prayers, her head supported
on my shoulder. I longed impatiently for the nurse to return, that I
might despatch her for the leech; not that I thought anything could be
done, but for my own comfort and greater satisfaction afterwards, and
that my mother might not die without some fitting attendance. The house
remained quiet, however, with that impressive quietness which sobers the
heart at such times, and I could not do this. And about six o'clock my
mother opened her eyes again.

'This is not Marsac,' she murmured abruptly, her eyes roving from the
ceiling to the wall at the foot of the bed.

No, Madame,' I answered, leaning over her, 'you are in Blois. But I am
here--Gaston, your son.'

She looked at me, a faint smile of pleasure stealing over her pinched
face. 'Twelve thousand livres a year,' she whispered, rather to herself
than to me, 'and an establishment, reduced a little, yet creditable,
very creditable.' For a moment she seemed to be dying in my arms, but
again opened her eyes quickly and looked me in the face. 'Gaston?' she
said, suddenly and strangely. 'Who said Gaston? He is with the King--I
have blessed him; and his days shall be long in the land!' Then, raising
herself in my arms with a last effort of strength, she cried loudly,
'Way there! Way for my son, the Sieur de Marsac!'

They were her last words. When I laid her down on the bed a moment
later, she was dead, and I was alone.

Madame de Bonne, my mother, was seventy at the time of her death, having
survived my father eighteen years. She was Marie de Loche de Loheac,
third daughter of Raoul, Sieur de Loheac, on the Vilaine, and by her
great-grandmother, a daughter of Jean de Laval, was descended from the
ducal family of Rohan, a relationship which in after-times, and under
greatly altered circumstances, Henry Duke of Rohan condescended to
acknowledge, honouring me with his friendship on more occasions than
one. Her death, which I have here recorded, took place on the fourth
of January, the Queen-Mother of France, Catherine de Medicis, dying a
little after noon on the following day.

In Blois, as in every other town, even Paris itself, the Huguenots