just got up and had nothing on but a dressing-gown about his shoulders, and presented to him despatches from Count de Brienne, saying that he had further orders to tell the king privately something of importance.  Then the king ordered those who were present to retire, and began reading the letter which the monk had brought asking for a private audience afterwards; the monk, seeing the king’s attention taken up with reading, drew his knife from his sleeve and drove it right into the king’s small gut, below the navel, so home that he left the knife in the hole; the which the king having drawn out with great exertion struck the monk a blow with the point of it on his left eyebrow, crying, ’Ah! wicked monk! he has killed me; kill him!’ At which cry running quickly up, the guards and others, such as happened to be nearest, massacred this assassin of a Jacobin who, as D’Aubigne says, stretched out his two arms against the wall, counterfeiting the crucifix, whilst the blows were dealt him.  Having been dragged out dead from the king’s chamber, he was stripped naked to the waist, covered with his gown and exposed to the public.”

Whilst Henry de Valois was thus struck down at St. Cloud, Henry of Navarre had moved with a good number of troops to the Pre-aux-Clercs; and seeing Rosny, who was darting along, pistol in hand, amongst the foremost, he called one of his gentlemen and said, “Maignan, go and tell M. de Rosny to come back; he will get taken or wounded in that rash style.”  “I should not care to speak so to him,” answered Maignan.  “I will tell him that your Majesty wants him.”  Meanwhile up came a gentleman at a gallop, who said three or four words in the King of Navarre’s ear.  “My friend,” said Henry to Rosny, “the king has just been wounded with a knife in the stomach; let us go and see about it; come with me.”  Henry took with him five and twenty gentlemen.  The king received him affectionately, exhorted him to change his religion for his salvation’s sake in another world and his fortunes in this; and, addressing the people of quality who thronged his chamber, he said, “I do pray you as my friends, and as your king I order you, to recognize after my death my brother here.  For my satisfaction and as your bounden duty, I pray you to swear it to him in my presence.”  All present took the oath.  Henry III. spoke in a firm voice; and his wound was not believed to be mortal.  Letters were sent in his name to the queen, to the governors of the provinces and to the princes allied to the crown, to inform them of the accident that had happened to the king, “which, please God, will turn out to be nothing.”  The King of Navarre asked for some details as to the assassin.  James Clement was a young Dominican who, according to report, had been a soldier before he became a monk.  He was always talking of waging war against Henry de Valois, and he was called “Captain Clement.”  He told a story about a vision he had of an angel, who had bidden him “to put