“Brother,” cried Marguerite to Charles IX., “remember, you made him my husband!”

“Faith, Margot is right, and Henry is my brother-in-law,” said the king.

II.—­The Boar Hunt

As time went on, if Catherine’s hatred of Henry of Navarre did not diminish, Charles IX. certainly became more friendly.

Catherine was for ever intriguing and plotting for the fortune of her sons and the downfall of her son-in-law, but Henry always managed to evade the webs she wove.  At a certain boar-hunt Charles was indebted to Henry for his life.

It was at the time when the king’s brother D’Anjou had accepted the crown of Poland, and the second brother, D’Alencon, a weak-minded, ambitious man, was secretly hoping for a crown somewhere, that Henry paid his debt for the king’s mercy to him on the night of St. Bartholomew.

Charles was an intrepid hunter, but the boar had swerved as the king’s spear was aimed at him, and, maddened with rage, the animal had rushed at him.  Charles tried to draw his hunting-knife but the sheath was so tight it was impossible.

“The boar! the boar!” shouted the king.  “Help, D’Alencon, help!”

D’Alencon was ghastly white as he placed his arquebuse to his shoulder and fired.  The ball, instead of hitting the boar, felled the king’s horse.

“I think,” D’Alencon murmured to himself, “that D’Anjou is King of France, and I King of Poland.”

The boar’s tusk had indeed grazed the king’s thigh when a hand in an iron glove dashed itself against the mouth of the beast, and a knife was plunged into its shoulder.

Charles rose with difficulty, and seemed for a moment as if about to fall by the dead boar.  Then he looked at Henry of Navarre, and for the first time in four-and-twenty years his heart was touched.

“Thanks, Harry!” he said.  “D’Alencon, for a first-rate marksman you made a most curious shot.”

On Marguerite coming up to congratulate the king and thank her husband, Charles added, “Margot, you may well thank him.  But for him Henry III. would be King of France.”

“Alas, madame,” returned Henry, “M.  D’Anjou, who is always my enemy, will now hate me more than ever; but everyone has to do what he can.”

Had Charles IX. been killed, the Duke d’Anjou would have been King of France, and D’Alencon most probably King of Poland.  Henry of Navarre would have gained nothing by this change of affairs.

Instead of Charles IX. who tolerated him, he would have had the Duke d’Anjou on the throne, who, being absolutely at one with his mother, Catherine, had sworn his death, and would have kept his oath.