bedchamber.  Perceiving these last, I jumped out of bed, and the poor gentleman after me, holding me fast by the waist.  I did not then know him; neither was I sure that he came to do me no harm, or whether the archers were in pursuit of him or me.  In this situation I screamed aloud, and he cried out likewise, for our fright was mutual.  At length, by God’s providence, M. de Nancay, captain of the guard, came into the bedchamber, and, seeing me thus surrounded, though he could not help pitying me, he was scarcely able to refrain from laughter.  However, he reprimanded the archers very severely for their indiscretion, and drove them out of the chamber.  At my request he granted the poor gentleman his life, and I had him put to bed in my closet, caused his wounds to be dressed, and did not suffer him to quit my apartment until he was perfectly cured.  I changed my shift, because it was stained with the blood of this man, and, whilst I was doing so, De Nancay gave me an account of the transactions of the foregoing night, assuring me that the King my husband was safe, and actually at that moment in the King’s bed-chamber.  He made me muffle myself up in a cloak, and conducted me to the apartment of my sister, Madame de Lorraine, whither I arrived more than half dead.  As we passed through the antechamber, all the doors of which were wide open, a gentleman of the name of Bourse, pursued by archers, was run through the body with a pike, and fell dead at my feet.  As if I had been killed by the same stroke, I fell, and was caught by M. de Nancay before I reached the ground.  As soon as I recovered from this fainting-fit, I went into my sister’s bedchamber, and was immediately followed by M. de Mioflano, first gentleman to the King my husband, and Armagnac, his first valet de chambre, who both came to beg me to save their lives.  I went and threw myself on my knees before the King and the Queen my mother, and obtained the lives of both of them.

Five or six days afterwards, those who were engaged in this plot, considering that it was incomplete whilst the King my husband and the Prince de Conde remained alive, as their design was not only to dispose of the Huguenots, but of the Princes of the blood likewise; and knowing that no attempt could be made on my husband whilst I continued to be his wife, devised a scheme which they suggested to the Queen my mother for divorcing me from him.  Accordingly, one holiday, when I waited upon her to chapel, she charged me to declare to her, upon my oath, whether I believed my husband to be like other men.  “Because,” said she, “if he is not, I can easily procure you a divorce from him.”  I begged her to believe that I was not sufficiently competent to answer such a question, and could only reply, as the Roman lady did to her husband, when he chid her for not informing him of his stinking breath, that, never having approached any other man near enough to know a difference, she thought all men had been alike in that respect.  “But,” said I, “Madame, since you have put the question to me, I can only declare I am content to remain as I am;” and this I said because I suspected the design of separating me from my husband was in order to work some mischief against him.