King. [Looking upon GUISE.]
Be witness, heaven, I gave him treble warning! 
He’s gone—­no more.—­Disperse, and think upon it. 
Beware my sword, which, if I once unsheath,
By all the reverence due to thrones and crowns,
Nought shall atone the vows of speedy justice,
Till fate to ruin every traitor brings,
That dares the vengeance of indulgent kings. [Exuent.

Footnotes: 
1.  The Council of Sixteen certainly offered to place twenty thousand
   disciplined citizens of Paris at the devotion of the Duke of Guise;
   and here the intended parallel came close:  for Shaftesbury used to
   boast, that he could raise the like number of brisk boys in the
   city of London, by merely holding up his finger.

2.  During the cabals of the Council of Sixteen, the Duke of Aumale
   approached Paris with five hundred veteran horse, levied in the
   disaffected province of Picardy.  Jean Conti, one of the sheriffs
   (Echevins) of Paris, was tampered with to admit them by St
   Martin’s gate; but as he refused, the leaguers stigmatised him as a
   heretic and favourer of Navarre.  Another of these officers
   consented to open to Aumale the gate of St Denis, of which the keys
   were intrusted to him.

The conspirators had determined, as is here expressed, to seize the person of the king, when he should attend the procession of the Flagellants, as he was wont to do in time of Lent.  But he was apprised of their purpose by Poltrot, one of their number, and used the pretext of indisposition to excuse his absence from the penitential procession. Davila, lib. viii.

3.  In the year 1565, an interview took place at Bayonne between
   Catharine of Medicis, her son Charles IX., and the Queen of Spain,
   attended by the famous Duke of Alva, and the Count of Benevento. 
   Many political discussions took place; and the opinion of Alva, as
   expressed in the text, is almost literally versified from Davila’s
   account of the conference. “Il Duca D’Alva, uomo di veemente
   natura risolutamente diceva, che per distruggere la novita della
   fede, e le sollevazioni di stato, bisognava levare le teste de’
   papaveri, pescare i pesci grossi e non si curare di prendere le
   ranocchie:  erano questi i concetti proferiti da lui; perche cessati
   i venti, l’onde della plebe facilmente si sarebbono da se stesse
   composte e acquietate:  aggiugneva, che un prencipe non puo far cosa
   piu vituperosa ne piu dannosa a se stesso, quanto il permettere al
   popolo il vivere secondo la loro coscienza, ponendo tanta varieta
   di religioni in uno stato, quanto sono i capricci degli huomini e
   le fantasie delle persone inquiete, aprendo la porta alla discordia
   e alla confusione:  e dimostrava con lunga commemorazione di
   segnalati esempj, che la diversita