“Quick! quick!” she said to him; “all is finished.”

And they both darted into the garden as if they had been drunk, or mad, or raging with passion.

No sooner did Henri observe them, however, than he seemed to have recovered all his strength; he hastened to place himself in their way, and they came upon him suddenly in the middle of the path, standing erect, his arms crossed, and more terrible in his silence than any one could ever have been in his loudest menaces.  Henri’s feelings had indeed arrived at such a pitch of exasperation, that he would readily have slain any man who would have ventured to maintain that women were not monsters sent from hell to corrupt the world.  He seized Diana by the arm, and stopped her suddenly, notwithstanding the cry of terror which she uttered, and notwithstanding the dagger which Remy put to his breast, and which even grazed his flesh.

“Oh! doubtless you do not recognize me,” he said furiously, gnashing his teeth; “I am that simple-hearted young man who loved you, and whose love you would not return, because for you there was no future, but merely the past.  Ah! beautiful hypocrite that you are, and you, foul liar, I know you at last—­I know and curse you.  To the one I say, I despise and contemn you:  to the other, I shrink from you with horror.”

“Make way!” cried Remy, in a strangled voice; “make way, young fool, or if not—­”

“Be it so,” replied Henri; “finish your work, and slay my body, wretch, since you have already destroyed my soul.”

“Silence!” muttered Remy, furiously, pressing the blade of his dagger more and more against Henri’s breast.

Diana, however, violently pushed Remy aside, and seizing Du Bouchage by the arm, she drew him straight before her.  She was lividly pale; her beautiful hair streamed over her shoulders; the contact of the hand on Henri’s wrist seemed to the latter cold and damp as the dews of death.

“Monsieur,” she said, “do not rashly judge of matters of which Heaven alone can judge.  I am Diana de Meridor, the mistress of Monsieur de Bussy, whom the Duc d’Anjou miserably allowed to perish when he could have saved him.  Eight days since Remy slew Aurilly, the duke’s accomplice, and the prince himself I have just poisoned with a peach, a bouquet, and a torch.  Move aside, monsieur—­move aside, I say, for Diana de Meridor, who is on her way to the Convent des Hospitalieres.”

With these words, and letting Henri’s arm fall, she took hold of that of Remy, as he waited by her side.

Henri fell on his knees, following the retreating figures of the two assassins, who disappeared behind the thick copse, as though it had been a vision from hell.  It was not till fully an hour afterward that Du Bouchage, overpowered with fatigue and overwhelmed with terror, with his brain on fire, was able to summon sufficient strength to drag himself to his apartment, nor was it until after he had made the attempt nearly a dozen times that he succeeded in escalading the window.  He walked to and fro in his room several times, and then staggered toward the bed, on which he threw himself.  Every one was sleeping quietly in the chateau.