The close of this happy and glorious year was at hand.  On the 27th of September, between six and seven P.M., a deplorable incident occurred, for the second time, to call Henry IV.’s attention to the weak side of his position.  He was just back from Picardy, and holding a court-reception at Schomberg House, at the back of the Louvre.  John Chastel, a young man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city, slipped in among the visitors, managed to approach the king, and dealt him a blow with a knife just as he was stooping to raise and embrace Francis de la Grange, Sieur de Montigny, who was kneeling before him.  The blow, aimed at the king’s throat, merely slit his upper lip and broke a tooth.  “I am wounded!” said the king.  John Chastel, having dropped his knife, had remained on the spot, motionless and confused.  Montigny, according to some, but, according to others, the Count of Soissons, who happened to be near him, laid hands upon him, saying, “Here is the assassin, either he or I.”  Henry IV., always prone to pass things over, pooh-poohed the suspicion, and was just giving orders to let the young man go, when the knife, discovered on the ground close to Chastel, became positive evidence.  Chastel was questioned, searched, and then handed, over to the grand provost of the household, who had him conveyed to prison at For-l’Eveque.  He first of all denied, but afterwards admitted his deed, regretting that he had missed his aim, and saying he was ready to try again for his own salvation’s sake and that of religion.  He declared that he had been brought up amongst the Jesuits in Rue St. Jacques, and he gave long details as to the education he had received there and the maxims he had heard there.  The rumor of his crime and of the revelations he had made spread immediately over Paris and caused passionate excitement.  The people filled the churches and rendered thanks to God for having preserved the king.  The burgesses took up arms and mustered at their guard-posts.  The mob bore down on the college of Jesuits in Rue St. Jacques with threats of violence.  The king and the Parliament sent a force thither; Brizard, councillor in the high chamber, captain of the district, had the fathers removed, and put them in security in his own house.  The inquiry was prosecuted deliberately and temperately.  It brought out that John Chastel had often heard repeated at his college “that it was allowable to kill kings, even the king regnant, when they were not in the church or approved of by the pope.”  The accused formally maintained this maxim, which was found written out and dilated upon under his own hand in a note-book seized at his father’s.  “Was it necessary, pray,” said Henry IV., laughing, “that the Jesuits should be convicted by my mouth?” John Chastel was sentenced to the most cruel punishment; and he underwent it on the 20th of December, 1594, by torch-light, before the principal entrance of Notre-Dame, without showing any symptom of regret.  His mother and his sisters were set at liberty.  His father, an old Leaguer, had been cognizant of his project, and had dissuaded him from it, but without doing anything to hinder it; he was banished from the kingdom for nine years, and from Paris forever.  His house was razed to the ground; and on the site was set up a pyramid with the decree of the Parliament inscribed upon it.