“Old fool,” growled Henri, “do you think, then, that a king presents himself in this way at other people’s residences without informing them of it?  Monsieur le Duc d’Anjou has been aware of my intended arrival since yesterday.”

And then, afraid of casting a gloom over those around him by a grave or sullen countenance, Henri, who wished to appear gentle and amiable at the expense of his brother Francois, exclaimed, “Well, then, since he has not come to meet us, we will go to meet him.”

“Show us the way there,” said Catherine, from the litter.

All the escort followed the road leading to the old park.

At the very moment that the guards, who were in advance, approached the hedge, a shrill and piercing cry rent the air.

“What is that?” said the king, turning toward his mother.

“Great Heaven!” murmured Catherine, endeavoring to read the faces of those around her, “it sounded like a cry of distress or despair.”

“My prince! my poor master!” cried Francois’ other aged attendant, appearing at the window, and exhibiting signs of the most passionate grief.

Every one hastened toward the pavilion, the king himself being hurried along with the others.  He arrived at the very moment when they were raising from the floor the Duc d’Anjou’s body, which his valet-de-chambre, having entered without authority, in order to announce the king’s arrival, had just perceived lying on the carpet of the bedroom.  The prince was cold, stiff, and perfectly inanimate, and it was only by a strange movement of the eyelids and a nervous contraction of the lips that it could be observed he was still alive.  The king paused at the threshold of the door, and those behind him followed his example.

[Illustration:  THE PRINCE WAS COLD, STIFF, AND PERFECTLY INANIMATE.]

“This is an ugly omen,” he murmured.

“Do not enter, my son, I implore you,” said Catherine to him.

“Poor Francois!” said Henri, delighted at being sent away, and thus being spared the spectacle of this agonizing scene.

The crowd, too, followed the king as he withdrew.

“Strange! strange!” murmured Catherine, kneeling down by the side of the prince, or rather of the corpse, no one being in the room, with her but the two old servants; and while the messengers were dispatched in every quarter of the town to find the prince’s physician, and while a courier galloped off to Paris in order to hasten the attendance of the king’s physicians, who had remained at Meaux with the queen, Catherine, with less knowledge, very probably, but not with less perspicacity than Miron himself could possibly have shown, examined the diagnostics of that singular malady which had struck down her son so suddenly.

Her experience was by no means indifferent; in the first place, therefore, she interrogated calmly, and without confusing them, the two attendants, who were tearing their hair and wringing their hands in the wildest despair.