The door was opened at last, but not till full daylight. It found Eustacie as ready to rush forth, past all resistance, as she had been the night before, and she was already in the doorway when her maid Veronique, her face swollen with weeping, caught her by the hands and implored her to turn back and listen.

And words about a rising of the Huguenots, a general destruction, corpses lying in the court, were already passing between the other maidens and the CONCIERGE. Eustacie turned upon her servant: ‘Veronique, what means it? Where is he?’

‘Alas! alas! Ah! Mademoiselle, do but lie down! Woe is me! I saw it all! Lie down, and I will tell you.’

‘Tell! I will not move till you have told me where my husband is,’ said Eustacie, gazing with eyes that seemed to Veronique turned to stone.

‘Ah! my lady—my dear lady! I was on the turn of the stairs, and saw all. The traitor—the Chevalier Narcisse—came on him, cloaked like you—and—shot him dead—with, oh, such cruel words of mockery! Oh! woe the day! Stay, stay, dear lady, the place is all blood—they are slaying them all—all the Huguenots! Will no one stop her?—Mademoiselle—ma’m’selle!—’

For Eustacie no sooner gathered the sense of Veronique’s words than she darted suddenly forwards, and was in a few seconds more at the foot of the stairs. There, indeed, lay a pool of dark gore, and almost in it Berenger’s black velvet cap, with the heron plume. Eustacie, with a low cry, snatched it up, continued her headlong course along the corridor, swiftly as a bird, Veronique following, and vainly shrieking to her to stop. Diane, appearing at the other end of the gallery, saw but for a moment the little figure, with the cloak gathered round her neck, and floating behind her, understood Veronique’s cry and joined in the chase across hall and gallery, where more stains were to be seen, even down to the marble stairs, every step slippery with blood. Others there were who saw and stood aghast, not understanding the apparition that flitted on so swiftly, never pausing till at the great door at the foot of the stairs she encountered a gigantic Scottish archer, armed to the teeth. She touched his arm, and standing with folder arms, looked up and said, ‘Good soldier, kill me! I am a Huguenots!’

‘Stop her! bring her back!’ cried Diane from behind. ‘It is Mdlle. De Nil-de-Merle!’

‘No, no! My husband is Huguenot! I am a Huguenot! Let them kill me, I say!’—struggling with Diane, who had now come up with her, and was trying to draw her back.

‘Puir lassie!’ muttered the stout Scotsman to himself, ‘this fearsome night has driven her demented.’

But, like a true sentinel, he moved neither hand nor foot to interfere, as shaking herself loose from Diane, she was springing down the steps into the court, when at that moment the young Abbe de Mericour was seen advancing, pale, breathless, horrorstruck, and to him Diane shrieked to arrest the headlong course. He obeyed, seeing the wild distraction of the white face and widely glaring eyes, took her by both hands, and held her in a firm grasp, saying, ‘Alas, lady, you cannot go out. It is no sight for any one.’

‘They are killing the Protestants,’ she said; ‘I am one! Let me find them and die.’

A strong effort to free herself ensued, but it was so suddenly succeeded by a swoon that the Abbe could scarcely save her from dropping on the steps. Diane begged him to carry her in, since they were in full view of men-at-arms in the court, and, frightful to say, of some of the ladies of the palace, who, in the frenzy of that dreadful time, had actually come down to examine the half-stripped corpses of the men with whom they had jested not twelve hours before.

‘Ah! it is no wonder,’ said the youthful Abbe, as he tenderly lifted the inanimate figure. ‘This has been a night of horrors. I was coming in haste to know whether the King knows of this frightful plot of M. de Guise, and the bloody work that is passing in Paris.’

‘The King!’ exclaimed Diane. ‘M. l’Abbe, do you know where he is now? In the balcony overlooking the river, taking aim at the fugitives! Take care! Even your soutane would not save you if M. d’O and his crew heard you. But I must pray you to aid me with this poor child! I dread that her wild cries should be heard.’

The Abbe, struck dumb with horror, silently obeyed Mdlle. De Ribaumont, and brought the still insensible Eustacie to the chamber, now deserted by all the young ladies. He laid her on her bed, and finding he could do no more, left her to her cousin and her maid.

The poor child had been unwell and feverish ever since the masque, and the suspense of these few days with the tension of that horrible night had prostrated her. She only awoke from her swoon to turn her head from the light and refuse to be spoken to.

‘But, Eustacie, child, listen; this is all in vain—he lives,’ said Diane.

‘Weary me not with falsehoods,’ faintly said Eustacie.

‘No! no! no! They meant to hinder your flight, but—-’

‘They knew of it?’ cried Eustacie, sitting up suddenly. ‘Then you told them. Go—go; let me never see you more! You have been his death!’

‘Listen! I am sure he lives! What! would they injure one whom my father loved? I heard my father say he would not have him hurt. Depend upon it, he is safe on his way to England.’

Eustacie gave a short but frightful hysterical laugh, and pointed to Veronique. ‘She saw it,’ she said; ‘ask her.’

‘Saw what?’ said Diane, turning fiercely on Veronique. ‘What vile deceit have you half killed your lady with?’

‘Alas! Mademoiselle, I did but tell her what I had seen,’ sighed Veronique, trembling.

‘Tell me!’ said Diane, passionately.

‘Yes, everything,’ said Eustacie, sitting up.

‘Ah! Mademoiselle, it will make you ill again.’

‘I WILL be ill—I WILL die! Heaven’s slaying is better than man’s. Tell her how you saw Narcisse.’

‘False girl!’ burst out Diane.

‘No, no,’ cried Veronique. ‘Oh, pardon me, Mademoiselle, I could not help it.’

In spite of her reluctance, she was forced to tell that she had found herself locked out of her mistress’s room, and after losing much time in searching for the CONCIERGE, learnt that the ladies were locked up by order of the Queen-mother, and was strongly advised not to be running about the passages. After a time, however, while sitting with the CONCIERGE’S wife, she heard such frightful whispers from men with white badges, who were admitted one by one by the porter, and all led silently to a small lower room, that she resolved on seeking out the Baron’s servant, and sending him to warn his master, while she would take up her station at her lady’s door. She found Osbert, and with him was ascending a narrow spiral leading from the offices—she, unfortunately, the foremost. As she came to the top, a scuffle was going on—four men had thrown themselves upon one, and a torch distinctly showed her the younger Chevalier holding a pistol to the cheek of the fallen man, and she heard the worlds, ‘Le baiser d’Eustacie! Jet e barbouillerai ce chien de visage,’’ and at the same moment the pistol was discharged. She sprang back, oversetting, as she believed, Osbert, and fled shrieking to the room of the CONCIERGE, who shut her in till morning.

‘And how—how,’ stammered Diane, ‘should you know it was the Baron?’

Eustacie, with a death-like look, showed for a moment what even in her swoon she had held clenched to her bosom, the velvet cap soaked with blood.

‘Besides,’ added Veronique, resolved to defend her assertion, ‘whom else would the words suit? Besides, are not all the heretic gentlemen dead? Why, as I sat there in the porter’s room, I heard M. d’O call each one of them by name, one after the other, into the court, and there the white-sleeves cut them down or pistolled them like sheep for the slaughter. They lie all out there on the terrace like so many carcases at market ready for winter salting.’

‘All slain?’ said Eustacie, dreamily.

‘All, except those that the King called into his own garde robe.’

‘Then, I slew him!’ Eustacie sank back.

‘I tell you, child,’ said Diane, almost angrily, ‘he lives. Not a hair of his head was to be hurt! The girl deceives you.’

But Eustacie had again become insensible, and awoke delirious, entreating to have the door opened, and fancying herself still on the revolving elysium, ‘Oh, demons, have pity!’ was her cry.

Diane’s soothings were like speaking to the winds; and at last she saw the necessity of calling in further aid; but afraid of the scandal that the poor girl’s raving accusations might create, she would not send for the Huguenots surgeon, Ambroise Pare, whom the King had carefully secured in his own apartments, but employed one of the barber valets of the Queen-mother’s household. Poor Eustacie was well pleased to see her blood flowing, and sank back on her pillow murmuring that she had confessed her husband’s faith, and would soon be one with him, and Diane feared for a moment lest the swoon should indeed be death.

The bleeding was so far effectual that it diminished the fever, and Eustacie became rational again when she had dozed and wakened, but she was little able or willing to speak, and would not so much as listen to Diane’s asseverations that Veronique had made a frightful error, and that the Baron would prove to be alive. Whether it were that the admission that Diane had known of the project for preventing the elopement that invalidated her words, or whether the sufferer’s instinct made her believe Veronique’s testimony rather than her cousin’s assurances, it was all ‘cramming words into her ear against the stomach of her sense,’ and she turned away from them with a piteous, petulant hopelessness: ‘Could they not even let her alone to die in peace!’

Diane was almost angered at this little silly child being in such an agony of sorrow—she, who could never have known how to love him. And after all this persistent grief was willfully thrown away. For Diane spoke in perfect sincerity when she taxed Veronique with an injurious, barbarous mistake. She knew her father’s strong aversion to violence, and the real predilection that Berenger’s good mien, respectful manners, and liberal usage had won from him, and she believed he had much rather the youth lived, provided he were inoffensive. No doubt a little force had been necessary to kidnap one so tall, active, and determined, and Veronique had made up her horrible tale after the usual custom of waiting-maids.

Nothing else SHOULD be true. Did she think otherwise, she should be even more frantic than Eustacie! Why, it would be her own doing! She had betrayed the day of the escape—she had held aloof from warning. There was pleasure in securing Nid-de-Merle for her brother, pleasure in balking the foolish child who had won the heart that disregarded her. Nay, there might have been even pleasure in the destruction of the scorner of her charms—the foe of her house—there might have been pride in receiving Queen Catherine’s dexterous hint that she had been an apt pupil, if the young Baron had only been something different—something less fair, gracious, bright, and pure. One bright angel seemed to have flitted across her path, and nothing should induce her to believe she had destroyed him.

The stripped corpses of the murdered Huguenots of the palace had been laid in a line on the terrace, and the ladies who had laughed with them the night before went to inspect them in death. A few remnants of Soeur Monique’s influence would have withheld Diane, but that a frenzy of suspense was growing on her. She must see for herself. If it were so, she must secure a fragment of the shining flaxen hair, if only as a token that anything so pure and bright had walked the earth.

She went on the horrible quest, shrinking where others stared. For it was a pitiless time, and the squadron of the Queen-mother were as lost to womanhood as the fishwomen of two centuries later. But Diane saw no corpse at once so tall, so young, and so fair, though blond Normans and blue-blooded Franks, lads scarce sixteen and stalwart warriors, lay in one melancholy rank. She at least bore away the certainly that the English Ribaumont was not there; and if not, he MUST be safe! She could obtain no further certainty, for she knew that she must not expect to see either her father or brother. There was a panic throughout the city. All Paris imagined that the Huguenots were on the point of rising and slaying all the Catholics, and, with the savagery of alarmed cowardice, the citizens and the mob were assisting the armed bands of the Dukes of Anjou and Guise to complete the slaughter, dragging their lodgers from their hiding-places, and denouncing all whom they suspected of reluctance to mass and confession. But on the Monday, Diane was able to send an urgent message to her father that he must come to speak with her, for Mdlle. De Nid-de-Merle was extremely ill. She would meet him in the garden after morning mass.

There accordingly, when she stepped forth pale, rigid, but stately, with her large fan in her hand to serve as a parasol, she met both him and her brother. She was for a moment sorry, for she had much power over her father, while she was afraid of her brother’s sarcastic tongue and eye; she knew he never scrupled to sting her wherever she was most sensitive, and she would have been able to extract much more from her father in his absence. France has never been without a tendency to produce the tiger-monkey, or ferocious fop; and the GENUS was in its full ascendancy under the sons of Catherine de Medicis, when the dregs of Francois the First’s PSEUDO-chivalry were not extinct—when horrible, retaliating civil wars of extermination had made life cheap; nefarious persecutions had hardened the heart and steeled the eye, and the licentiousness promoted by the shifty Queen as one of her instruments of government had darkened the whole understanding. The most hateful heights of perfidy, effeminacy, and hypocrisy were not reached till poor Charles IX., who only committed crimes on compulsion, was in his grave, and Henry III. on the throne; but Narcisse de Ribaumont was one of the choice companions of the latter, and after the night and day of murder now stood before his sister with scented hair and handkerchief—the last, laced, delicately held by a hand in an embroidered glove—emerald pendants in his ears, a moustache twisted into sharp points and turned up like an eternal sardonic smile, and he led a little white poodle by a rose-coloured ribbon.

‘Well, sister,’ he said, as he went, through the motions of kissing her hand, and she embraced her father; ‘so you don’t know how to deal with megrims and transports?’

‘Father,’ said Diane, not vouchsafing any attention, ‘unless you can send her some assurance of his life, I will not answer for the consequences.’

Narcisse laughed: ‘Take her this dog, with my compliments. That is the way to deal with such a child as that.’

‘You do not know what you say, brother,’ answered Diane with dignity. ‘It goes deeper than that.’

‘The deeper it goes, child,’ said the elder Chevalier, ‘the better it is that she should be undeceived as soon as possible. She will recover, and be amenable the sooner.’

‘Then he lives, father?’ exclaimed Diane. ‘He lives, though she is not to hear it—say——’

‘What know I?’ said the old man, evasively. ‘On a night of confusion many mischances are sure to occur! Lurking in the palace at the very moment when there was a search for the conspirators, it would have been a miracle had the poor young man escaped.’

Diane turned still whiter. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘that was why you made Monsieur put Eustacie into the ballet, that they might not go on Wednesday!’

‘It was well hinted by you, daughter. We could not have effectually stopped them on Wednesday without making a scandal.’

‘Once more,’ said Diane, gasping, though still resolute; ‘is not the story told by Eustacie’s woman false—that she saw him—pistolled—by you, brother?’

‘Peste!’ cried Narcisse. ‘Was the prying wench there? I thought the little one might be satisfied that he had neighbour’s fare. No matter; what is done for one’s beaux yeux is easily pardoned—and if not, why, I have her all the same!’

‘Nevertheless, daughter,’ said the Chevalier, gravely, ‘the woman must be silenced. Either she must be sent home, or taught so to swear to having been mistaken, that la petite may acquit your brother! But what now, my daughter?’

‘She is livid!’ exclaimed Narcisse, with his sneer. ‘What, sir, did not you know she was smitten with the peach on the top of a pole?’

‘Enough, brother,’ said Diane, recovering herself enough to speak hoarsely, but with hard dignity. ‘You have slain—you need not insult, one whom you have lost the power of understanding!’

‘Shallow schoolboys certainly form no part of my study, save to kick them down-stairs when they grow impudent,’ said Narcisse, coolly. ‘It is only women who think what is long must be grand.’

‘Come, children, no disputes,’ said the Chevalier. ‘Of course we regret that so fine a youth mixed himself up with the enemies of the kingdom, like the stork among the sparrows. Both Diane and I are sorry for the necessity; but remember, child, that when he was interfering between your brother and his just right of inheritance and destined wife, he could not but draw such a fate on himself. Now all is smooth, the estates will be united in their true head, and you—you too, my child, will be provided for as suits your name. All that is needed is to soothe the little one, so as to hinder her from making an outcry—and silence the maid; my child will do her best for her father’s sake, and that of her family.’

Diane was less demonstrative than most of her countrywomen. She had had time to recollect the uselessness of giving vent to her indignant anguish, and her brother’s derisive look held her back. The family tactics, from force of habit, recurred to her; she made no further objection to her father’s commands; but when her father and brother parted with her, she tottered into the now empty chapel, threw herself down, with her burning forehead on the stone step, and so lay for hours. It was not in prayer. It was because it was the only place where she could be alone. To her, heaven above and earth below seemed alike full of despair, darkness, and cruel habitations, and she lay like one sick with misery and repugnance to the life and world that lay before her—the hard world that had quenched that one fair light and mocked her pity. It was a misery of solitude, and yet no thought crossed her of going to weep and sympathize with the other sufferer. No; rivalry and jealousy came in there! Eustacie viewed herself as his wife, and the very thought that she had been deliberately preferred and had enjoyed her triumph hardened Diane’s heart against her. Nay, the open violence and abandonment of her grief seemed to the more restrained and concentrated nature of her elder a sign of shallowness and want of durability; and in a certain contemptuous envy at her professing a right to mourn, Diane never even reconsidered her own resolution to play out her father’s game, consign Eustacie to her husband’s murdered, and leave her to console herself with bridal splendours and a choice of admirers from all the court.

However, for the present Diane would rather stay away as much as possible from the sick-bed of the poor girl; and when an approaching step forced her to rouse herself and hurry away by the other door of the chapel, she did indeed mount to the ladies’ bed-chamber, but only to beckon Veronique out of hearing and ask for her mistress.

Just the same still, only sleeping to have feverish dreams of the revolving wheel or the demons grappling her husband, refusing all food but a little drink, and lying silent except for a few moans, heedless who spoke or looked at her.

Diane explained that in that case it was needless to come to her, but added, with the vraisemblance of falsehood in which she had graduated in Catherine’s school, ‘Veronique, as I told you, you were mistaken.’

‘Ah, Mademoiselle, if M. le Baron lives, she will be cured at once.’

‘Silly girl,’ said Diane, giving relief to her pent-up feeling by asperity of manner, ‘how could he live when you and your intrigues got him into the palace on such a night? Dead he is, OF COURSE; but it was your own treacherous, mischievous fancy that laid it on my brother. He was far away with M. de Guise at the attack on the Admiral. It was some of Monsieur’s grooms you saw. You remember she had brought him into a scrape with Monsieur, and it was sure to be remembered. And look you, if you repeat the other tale, and do not drive it out of her head, you need not look to be long with her—no, nor at home. My father will have no one there to cause a scandal by an evil tongue.’

That threat convinced Veronique that she had been right; but she, too, had learnt lessons at the Louvre, and she was too diplomatic not to ask pardon for her blunder, promise to contradict it when her mistress could listen, and express her satisfaction that it was not the Chevalier Narcisse—for such things were not pleasant, as she justly observed, in families.

About noon on the Tuesday the Louvre was unusually tranquil. All the world had gone forth to a procession to Notre Dame, headed by the King and all the royal family, to offer thanksgiving for the deliverance of the country from the atrocious conspiracy of the Huguenots. Eustacie’s chamber was freed from the bustle of all the maids of honour arraying themselves, and adjusting curls, feathers, ruffs and jewels; and such relief as she was capable of experiencing she felt in the quiet.

Veronique hoped she would sleep, and watched like a dragon to guard against any disturbance, springing out with upraised finger when a soft gliding step and rustling of brocade was heard. ‘Does she sleep?’ said a low voice; and Veronique, in the pale thin face with tear-swollen eyes and light yellow hair, recognized the young Queen. ‘My good girl,’ said Elisabeth, with almost a beseeching gesture, ‘let me see her. I do not know when again I may be able.’

Veronique stood aside, with the lowest possible of curtseys, just as her mistress with a feeble, weary voice murmured, ‘Oh, make them let me alone!’

‘My poor, poor child,’ said the Queen, bending over Eustacie, while her brimming eyes let the tears fall fast, ‘I will not disturb you long, but I could not help it.’

‘Her Majesty!’ exclaimed Eustacie, opening wide her eyes in amazement.

‘My dear, suffer me here a little moment,’ said the meek Elisabeth, seating herself so as to bring her face near to Eustacie’s; ‘I could not rest till I had seen how it was with you and wept with you.’

‘Ah, Madame, you can weep,’ said Eustacie slowly, looking at the Queen’s heavy tearful eyes almost with wonder; ‘but I do not weep because I am dying, and that is better.’

‘My dear, my dear, do not so speak!’ exclaimed the gentle but rather dull Queen.

‘Is it wrong? Nay, so much the better—then I shall be with HIM,’ said Eustacie in the same feeble dreamy manner, as if she did not understand herself, but a little roused by seeing she had shocked her visitor. ‘I would not be wicked. He was all bright goodness and truth: but his does not seem to be goodness that brings to heaven, and I do not want to be in the heaven of these cruel false men—I think it would go round and round.’ She shut her eyes as if to steady herself, and that moment seemed to give her more self-recollection, for looking at the weeping, troubled visitor, she exclaimed, with more energy, ‘Oh! Madame, it must be a dreadful fancy! Good men like him cannot be shut into those fiery gates with the torturing devils.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed the Queen. ‘My poor, poor child, grieve not yourself thus. At my home, my Austrian home, we do not speak in this dreadful way. My father loves and honours his loyal Protestants, and he trusts that the good God accepts their holy lives in His unseen Church, even though outwardly they are separate from us. My German confessor ever said so. Oh! Child, it would be too frightful if we deemed that all those souls as well as bodies perished in these frightful days. Myself, I believe that they have their reward for their truth and constancy.’

Eustacie caught the Queen’s hand, and fondled it with delight, as though those words had veritably opened the gates of heaven to her husband. The Queen went on in her slow gentle manner, the very tone of which was inexpressibly soothing and sympathetic: ‘Yes, and all will be clear there. No more violence. At home our good men think so, and the King will think the same when these cruel counselors will leave him to himself; and I pray, I pray day and night, that God will not lay this sin to his account, but open his eyes to repent. Forgive him, Eustacie, and pray for him too.’

‘The King would have saved my husband, Madame,’ returned Eustacie. ‘He bade him to his room. It was I, unhappy I, who detained him, lest our flight should have been hindered.’

The Queen in her turn kissed Eustacie’s forehead with eager gratitude. ‘Oh, little one, you have brought a drop of comfort to a heavy heart. Alas! I could sometimes feel you to be a happier wife than I, with your perfect trust in the brave pure-spirited youth, unwarped by these wicked cruel advisers. I loved to look at his open brow; it was so like our bravest German Junkers. And, child, we thought, both of us, to have brought about your happiness; but, ah! it has but caused all this misery.’

‘No, no, dearest Queen,’ said Eustacie, ‘this month with all its woe has been joy—life! Oh! I had rather lie here and die for his loss than be as I was before he came. And NOW—now, you have given him to me for all eternity—if but I am fit to be with him!’

Eustacie had revived so much during the interview that the Queen could not believe her to be in a dying state; but she continued very ill, the low fever still hanging about her, and the faintness continual. The close room, the turmoil of its many inhabitants, and the impossibility of quiet also harassed her greatly, and Elisabeth had little or no power of making any other arrangements for her in the palace. Ladies when ill were taken home, and this poor child had no home. The other maids of honour were a gentler, simpler set than Catherine’s squadron, and were far from unkind; but between them and her, who had so lately been the brightest child of them all, there now lay that great gulf. ‘Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.‘ That the little blackbird, as they used to call her, should have been on the verge of running away with her own husband was a half understood, amusing mystery discussed in exaggerating prattle. This was hushed, indeed, in the presence of that crushed, prostrate, silent sorrow; but there was still an utter incapacity of true sympathy, that made the very presence of so many oppressive, even when they were not in murmurs discussing the ghastly tidings of massacres in other cities, and the fate of acquaintances.

On that same day, the Queen sent for Diane to consult her about the sufferer. Elisabeth longed to place her in her own cabinet and attend on her herself; but she was afraid to do this, as the unhappy King was in such a frenzied mood, and so constantly excited by his brother and Guise, that it was possible that some half-delirious complaint from poor Eustacie might lead to serious consequences. Indeed, Elisabeth, though in no state to bear agitation, was absorbed in her endeavour to prevent him from adding blood to blood, and a few days later actually saved the lives of the King of Navarre and Prince of Conde, by throwing herself before him half-dressed, and tearing his weapon from his hand. Her only hope was that if she should give him a son, her influence for mercy would revive with his joy. Meantime she was powerless, and she could only devise the sending the poor little sufferer to a convent, where the nuns might tend her till she was restored to health and composure. Diane acquiesced, but proposed sending for her father, and he was accordingly summoned. Diane saw him first alone, and both agreed that he had better take Eustacie to Bellaise, where her aunt would take good care of her, and in a few months she would no doubt be weary enough of the country to be in raptures to return to Paris on any terms.

Yet even as Diane said this, a sort of longing for the solitude of the woods of Nid-de-Merle came over her, a recollection of the good Sister Monique, at whose knee she had breathed somewhat of the free pure air that her murdered cousin had brought with him; a sense that there she could pour forth her sorrow. She offered herself at once to go with Eustacie.

‘No, no, my daughter,’ said the Chevalier, ‘that is unnecessary. There is pleasanter employment for you. I told you that your position was secured. Here is a brilliant offer—M. de Selinville,’

‘Le bonhomme de Selinville!’’ exclaimed Diane, feeling rather as if the compensation were like the little dog offered to Eustacie.

‘Know ye not that his two heretic nephews perished the other night. He is now the head of his name, the Marquis, the only one left of his house.’

‘He begins early,’ said Diane.

‘An old soldier, my daughter, scarce stays to count the fallen. He has no time to lose. He is sixty, with a damaged constitution. It will be but the affair of a few years, and then will my beautiful Marquise be free to choose for herself. I shall go from the young Queen to obtain permission from the Queen-mother.’

No question was asked. Diane never even thought objection possible. It was a close to that present life which she had begun to loathe; it gave comparative liberty. It would dull and confuse her heart-sick pain, and give her a certain superiority to her brother. Moreover, it would satisfy the old father, whom she really loved. Marriage with a worn-out old man was a simple step to full display for young ladies without fortune.

The Chevalier told Queen Elisabeth his purpose of placing his niece in the family convent, under the care of her aunt, the Abbess, in a foundation endowed by her own family on the borders of her own estate. Elisabeth would have liked to keep her nearer, but could not but own that the change to the scenes of her childhood might be more beneficial than a residence in a nunnery at Paris, and the Chevalier spoke of his niece with a tender solicitude that gained the Queen’s heart. She consented, only stipulating that Eustacie’s real wishes should be ascertained, and herself again made the exertion of visiting the patient for the purpose.

Eustacie had been partly dressed, and was lying as near as she could to the narrow window. The Queen would not let her move, but took her damp languid hand, and detailed her uncle’s proposal. It was plain that it was not utterly distasteful. ‘Soeur Monique,’ she said, ‘Soeur Monique would sing hymns to me, and then I should not see the imps at night.’

‘Poor child! And you would like to go? You could bear the journey?’

‘It would be in the air! And then I should not smell blood—blood!’ And her cheeks became whiter again, if possible.

‘Then you would not rather be at the Carmelites, or Maubuisson, near me?’

‘Ah! Madame, there would not be Soeur Monique. If the journey would only make me die, as soon as I came, with Soeur Monique to hush me, and keep off dreadful images!’

‘Dear child, you should put away the thought of dying. Maybe you are to live, that your prayers may win salvation for the soul of him you love.’

‘Oh, then! I should like to go into a convent so strict—so strict, cried Eustacie, with renewed vigour. ‘Bellaise is nothing like strict enough. Does your Majesty indeed think that my prayers will aid him?’

‘Alas! what hope could we have but in praying?’ said Elisabeth, with tears in her eyes. ‘Little one, we will be joined at least in our prayers and intercessions: thou wilt not forget in thine one who yet lives, unhappier than all!’

‘And, oh, my good, my holy Queen, will you indeed pray for him—my husband? He was so good, his faith can surely not long be reckoned against him. He did not believe in Purgatory! Perhaps——’ Then frowning with a difficulty far beyond a fever-clouded brain, she concluded—‘At least, orisons may aid him! It is doing something for him! Oh, where are my beads?—I can begin at once.’

The Queen put her arm round her, and together they said the De profundis,—the Queen understood every word far more for the living than the dead. Again Elisabeth had given new life to Eustacie. The intercession for her husband was something to live for, and the severest convent was coveted, until she was assured that she would not be allowed to enter on any rule till she had time to recover her health, and show the constancy of her purpose by a residence at Bellaise.

Ere parting, however, the Queen bent over her, and colouring, as if much ashamed of what she said, whispered—‘Child, not a word of the ceremony at Montpipeau!—you understand? The King was always averse; it would bring him and me into dreadful trouble with THOSE OTHERS, and alas! It makes no difference now. You will be silent?’

And Eustacie signed her acquiescence, as indeed no difficulty was made in her being regarded as the widow of the Baron de Ribaumont, when she further insisted on procuring a widow’s dress before she quitted her room, and declared, with much dignity, that she should esteem no person her friend who called her Mademoiselle de Nid-de-Merle. To this the Chevalier de Ribaumont was willing to give way; he did not care whether Narcisse married her as Berenger’s widow or as the separated maiden wife, and he thought her vehement opposition and dislike would die away the faster the fewer impediments were placed in her way. Both he and Diane strongly discouraged any attempt on Narcisse’s widow part at a farewell interview; and thus unmolested, and under the constant soothing influence of reciting her prayers, in the trust that they were availing her husband, Eustacie rallied so much that about ten day after the dreadful St. Batholomew, in the early morning, she was half-led half-carried down the stairs between her uncle and Veronique. Her face was close muffled in her thick black veil, but when she came to the foot of the first stairs where she had found Berenger’s cap, a terrible shuddering came on her; she again murmured something about the smell of blood, and fell into a swoon.

‘Carry her on at once,’ said Diane, who was following,—‘there will be not end to it if you do not remove her immediately.’

And thus shielded from the sight of Marcisse’s intended passionate gesture of farewell at the palace-door, Eustecie was laid at full length on the seat of the great ponderous family coach, where Veronique hardly wished to revive her till the eight horses should have dragged her beyond the streets of Paris, with their terrible associations, and the gibbets still hung with the limbs of the murdered.