We have already stated the anxiety of the Guises to revenge themselves upon M. de Luz; and we have now to relate the tragedy which supervened upon this resolution.  It appears to be the common fate of all favourites to accelerate their own ruin by personal imprudence; nor was M. de Luz destined to prove an exception.  His life had been a varied one; but the spirit of intrigue and enterprise with which he was endowed had enabled him to bid defiance to adverse fortune, and to struggle successfully against every reverse.  Patient under disappointment because strong in his confidence of future compensation, he was less cautious in his more prosperous moments; and in one of these he was unhappy enough to afford a pretext for the violence of the enemies who had vowed his ruin.

Disregarding the presence of the Chevalier de Guise, or perhaps unconscious of his propinquity, De Luz, shortly after the return of the Duc de Bellegarde to Languedoc, was relating to a group of nobles, who were lounging away the time in the great gallery of the Louvre while awaiting the appearance of the King, the circumstances which preceded the assassination of the Duc de Guise at Blois; boasting that he was present with the Marechal de Brissac when Henri III decided upon the murder, and had even prevented the former from intimating his danger to the intended victim.  The Chevalier, who was young, impetuous, and, like all the members of his house, utterly careless of the consequences of his actions, would have felt himself justified in demanding satisfaction of M. de Luz simply for the insult offered to his brothers and himself by his abrupt and unscrupulous abandonment of their interests, and the affront given to their friend and ally the Duc de Bellegarde; but when to these real or imagined injuries was superadded the fact that he had publicly boasted of the share which he had gratuitously and wantonly taken in the murder of his father, no wonder that the fiery young man, disregarding alike the royal edicts against duelling and the dictates of humanity, at once resolved to silence the vauntings of the quasi-assassin, or to perish in the attempt.

At the moment in which he volunteered the fatal communication De Luz was protected by the roof that covered him.  It was certain death to any individual, whatever might be his rank, who drew a hostile weapon within the precincts of the royal palace; and De Guise was aware that by such an act of imprudence he might forfeit all hope of vengeance.  He affected, consequently, not to have overheard the imprudent admission of the baron, and controlled the impulse which would have led him to fell him as he stood; but his thirst of vengeance only became the more unquenchable by delay, and he watched the movements of his destined victim with an assiduity which soon enabled him to slake it.

On the 5th of January, at mid-day, his carriage encountered that of M. de Luz in the Rue St. Honore, when he immediately summoned him to alight and defend himself; and at the second pass stretched him lifeless at his feet.[158]