LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

1.—­Frontispiece.—­Briquet at the window. 2.—­“His face pleases me, and he has white hands and a well-kept beard.” 3.—­Chicot, on rising, found himself face to face with a soldier. 4.—­“An ax!” cried Henri, and with a vigorous arm he struck down wood
    and iron.
5.—­“I said you were a traitor, and as a traitor you shall die.” 6.—­The prince was cold, stiff, and perfectly inanimate.

THE FORTY-FIVE GUARDSMEN

CHAPTER I.

The Porte st. Antoine.

On the 26th of October, 1585, the barriers of the Porte St. Antoine were, contrary to custom, still closed at half-past ten in the morning.  A quarter of an hour after, a guard of twenty Swiss, the favorite troops of Henri III., then king, passed through these barriers, which were again closed behind them.  Once through, they arranged themselves along the hedges, which, outside the barrier, bordered each side of the road.

There was a great crowd collected there, for numbers of peasants and other people had been stopped at the gates on their way into Paris.  They were arriving by three different roads—­from Montreuil, from Vincennes, and from St. Maur; and the crowd was growing more dense every moment.  Monks from the convent in the neighborhood, women seated on pack-saddles, and peasants in their carts, and all, by their questions more or less pressing, formed a continual murmur, while some voices were raised above the others in shriller tones of anger or complaint.

There were, besides this mass of arrivals, some groups who seemed to have come from the city.  These, instead of looking at the gate, fastened their gaze on the horizon, bounded by the Convent of the Jacobins, the Priory of Vincennes, and the Croix Faubin, as though they were expecting to see some one arrive.  These groups consisted chiefly of bourgeois, warmly wrapped up, for the weather was cold, and the piercing northeast wind seemed trying to tear from the trees all the few remaining leaves which clung sadly to them.

Three of these bourgeois were talking together—­that is to say, two talked and one listened, or rather seemed to listen, so occupied was he in looking toward Vincennes.  Let us turn our attention to this last.  He was a man who must be tall when he stood upright, but at this moment his long legs were bent under him, and his arms, not less long in proportion, were crossed over his breast.  He was leaning against the hedge, which almost hid his face, before which he also held up his hand as if for further concealment.  By his side a little man, mounted on a hillock, was talking to another tall man who was constantly slipping off the summit of the same hillock, and at each slip catching at the button of his neighbor’s doublet.

“Yes, Maitre Miton,” said the little man to the tall one, “yes, I tell you that there will be 100,000 people around the scaffold of Salcede—­100,000 at least.  See, without counting those already on the Place de Greve, or who came there from different parts of Paris, the number of people here; and this is but one gate out of sixteen.”