the balls might have been poisoned.  “It will be as God pleases as to that,” said Coligny; and, turning towards the minister, Merlin, who had hurried to him, he added, “pray that He may grant me the gift of perseverance.”  Towards midday, Marshals de Damville, De Cosse, and De Villars went to see him “out of pure friendship,” they told him, “and not to exhort him to endure his mishap with patience:  we know that you will not lack patience.”  “I do protest to you,” said Coligny, “that death affrights me not; it is of God that I hold my life; when He requires it back from me, I am quite ready to give it up.  But I should very much like to see the king before I die; I have to speak to him of things which concern his person and the welfare of his state, and which I feel sure none of you would dare to tell him of.”  “I will go and inform his Majesty, . . .” rejoined Damville; and he went out with Villars and Teligny, leaving Marshal de Cosse in the room.  “Do you remember,” said Coligny to him, “the warnings I gave you a few hours ago?  You will do well to take your precautions.”

About two P. M., the king, the queen-mother, and the Dukes of Anjou and Alencon, her two other sons, with many of their high officers, repaired to the admiral’s.  “My dear father,” said the king, as he went in, “the hurt is yours; the grief and the outrage mine; but I will take such vengeance that it shall never be forgotten;” to which he added his usual imprecations.  “Then the admiral, who lay in bed sorely wounded,” says the Duke of Anjou himself, in his account of this interview, “requested that he might speak privately to the king, which the king granted readily, making a sign to the queen my mother, and to me, to withdraw, which we did incontinently into the middle of the room, where we remained standing during this secret colloquy, which caused us great misgiving.  We saw ourselves surrounded by more than two hundred gentlemen and captains of the admiral’s party, who were in the room and another adjoining, and, besides, in a ball below, the which, with sad faces and the gestures and bearing of malcontents, were whispering in one another’s ears, frequently passing and repasssing before and behind us, not with so much honor and respect as they ought to have done, and as if they had some suspicion that we had somewhat to do with the admiral’s hurt.  We were seized with astonishment and fear at seeing ourselves shut in there, as my mother has since many times confessed to me, saying that she had never been in any place where there was so much cause for fright, and whence she had gone away with more relief and pleasure.  This apprehension caused us to speedily break in upon the conversation the admiral was having with the king, under a polite excuse invented by the queen my mother, who, approaching the king, said out loud that she had no idea he would make the admiral talk so much, and that she saw quite well that his physicians and surgeons considered it