He had not to disquiet himself for long about this rival.  On the 18th of February, 1563, the Duke of Guise was vigorously pushing forward the siege of Orleans, the stronghold of the Protestants, stoutly defended by Coligny.  He was apprised that his wife, the Duchess Anne d’Este, had just arrived at a castle near the camp with the intention of using her influence over her husband in order to spare Orleans from the terrible consequences of being taken by assault.  He mounted his horse to go and join her, and he was chatting to his aide-de-camp Rostaing about the means of bringing about a pacification, when, on arriving at a cross-road where several ways met, he felt himself struck in the right shoulder, almost under the arm, by a pistol-shot fired from behind a hedge at a distance of six or seven paces.  A white plume upon his head had made him conspicuous, and as, for so short a ride, he had left off his cuirass, three balls had passed through him from side to side.  “That shot has been in keeping for me a long while,” said he:  “I deserve it for not having taken precautions.”  He fell upon his horse’s neck, as he vainly tried to draw his sword from the scabbard; his arm refused its office.

[Illustration:  The Duke of Guise waylaid—–­315]

When he had been removed to the castle, where the duchess, in tears, received him, “I am vexed at it,” said he, “for the honor of France;” and to his son Henry, Prince of Joinville, a boy of thirteen, he added, kissing him, “God grant you grace, my son, to become a good man.”  He languished for six days, amidst useless attentions paid him by his surgeons, giving Catherine de’ Medici, who came daily to see him, the most pacific counsels, and taking of the duchess his wife the most tender farewells mingled with the most straightforward and honest avowals.  “I do not mean to deny,” he said to her, “that the counsels and frailties of youth have led me sometimes into something at which you had a right to be offended; I pray you to be pleased to excuse me and forgive me.”  His brother, the Cardinal de Guise, Bishop of Metz, which the duke had so gloriously defended against Charles V., warned him that it was time to prepare himself for death by receiving the sacraments of the church.  “Ah! my dear brother,” said the duke to him, “I have loved you greatly in times past, but I love you now still more than ever, for you are doing me a truly brotherly turn.”  On the 24th of February they still offered him aliment to sustain his rapidly increasing weakness but “Away, away,” said he; “I have taken the manna from heaven, whereby I feel myself so comforted that it seems to me as if I were already in paradise.  This body has no further need of nourishment;” and so he expired on the 24th of February, 1563, an object, at his death, of the most profound regret amongst his army and his party, as well as his family, after having been during his life the object of their lively admiration.  “I do not forget,” says his contemporary Stephen Pasquier in reference to him, “that it was no small luck for him to die at this period, when he was beyond reach of the breeze, and when shifting Fortune had not yet played him any of those turns whereby she is so cunning in lowering the horn of the bravest.”