door of the old cabinet, and just as he leaned down to raise the tapestry that covered it, Guise was struck five poniard blows in the chest, neck, and reins.  “God ha’ mercy!” he cried, and, though his sword was entangled in his cloak, and he was himself pinned by the arms and legs and choked by the blood that spurted from his throat, he dragged his murderers, by a supreme effort of energy, to the other end of the room, where he fell down backwards and lifeless before the bed of Henry III., who, coming to the door of his room and asking “if it was done,” contemplated with mingled satisfaction and terror the inanimate body of his mighty rival, “who seemed to be merely sleeping, so little was he changed.”  “My God! how tall he is!” cried the king; “he looks even taller than when he was alive.”

[Illustration:  Henry III. and the Murder of Guise——­437]

“They are killing my brother!” cried the Cardinal of Guise, when he heard the noise that was being made in the next room; and he rose up to run thither.  The Archbishop of Lyons, Peter d’Espinac, did the same.  The Duke of Aumont held them both back, saying, “Gentlemen, we must wait for the king’s orders.”  Orders came to arrest them both, and confine them in a small room over the council-chamber.  They had “eggs, bread, wine from the king’s cellar, their breviaries, their night-gowns, a palliasse, and a mattress,” brought to them there; and they were kept under ocular supervision for four and twenty hours.  The Cardinal of Guise was released the next morning, but only to be put to death like his brother.  The king spared the Archbishop of Lyons.

“I am sole king,” said Henry III. to his ministers, as he entered the council-chamber; and shortly afterwards, going to see the queen-mother, who was ill of the gout, “How do you feel?” he asked.  “Better,” she answered.  “So do I,” replied the king:  “I feel much better; this morning I have become King of France again; the King of Paris is dead.”  “You have had the Duke of Guise killed?” asked Catherine “have you reflected well?  God grant that you become not king of nothing at all.  I hope the cutting is right; now for the sewing.”  According to the majority of the historians, Catherine had neither been in the secret nor had anything to do with the preparations for the measure.  Granted that she took no active part in it, and that she avoided even the appearance of having any previous knowledge of it; she was not fond of responsibility, and she liked better to negotiate between the different parties than to make her decisive choice between them; prudent tendencies grow with years, and in 1588 she was sixty-nine.  It is difficult, however, to believe that, being the habitual confidant of her favorite son, she was ignorant of a design long meditated, and known to many persons many days before its execution.  The event once accomplished, ill as she was, and contrary to the advice of her physicians, she had herself carried