Just as he was entering the house, the servant who had been sent to him told him that the lady wished to speak with him before he saw her husband, and that she was waiting for him in a room where she was alone with his own serving-man; he would therefore do well to send his other servant away by the front door.  This he did.  Then while he was going up a small, dark stairway, the Proctor St. Aignan, who had placed some men in ambush in a closet, heard the noise, and demanded what it was; whereupon he was told that a man was trying to enter secretly into his house.

At the moment, a certain Thomas Guerin, a murderer by trade, who had been hired by the Proctor for the purpose, came forward and gave the poor young man so many sword-thrusts that whatever defence he was able to make could not save him from falling dead in their midst.

Meanwhile the servant who was waiting with the lady, said to her—­

“I hear my master speaking on the stairway.  I will go to him.”

But the lady stopped him and said—­

“Do not trouble yourself; he will come soon enough.”

A little while afterwards the servant, hearing his master say, “I am dying, may God receive my soul!” wished to go to his assistance, but the lady again withheld him, saying—­

“Do not trouble yourself; my husband is only chastising him for his follies.  We will go and see what it is.”

Then, leaning over the balustrade at the top of the stairway, she asked her husband—­

“Well, is it done?”

“Come and see,” he replied.  “I have now avenged you on the man who put you to such shame.”

So saying, he drove a dagger that he was holding ten or twelve times into the belly of a man whom, alive, he would not have dared to assail.

When the murder had been accomplished, and the two servants of the dead man had fled to carry the tidings to the unhappy father, St. Aignan bethought himself that the matter could not be kept secret.  But he reflected that the testimony of the dead man’s servants would not be believed, and that no one in his house had seen the deed done, except the murderers, and an old woman-servant, and a girl fifteen years of age.  He secretly tried to seize the old woman, but, finding means to escape out of his hands, she sought sanctuary with the Jacobins,(8) and was afterwards the most trustworthy witness of the murder.  The young maid remained for a few days in St. Aignan’s house, but he found means to have her led astray by one of the murderers, and had her conveyed to a brothel in Paris so that her testimony might not be received.(9)

8 It was still customary to take sanctuary in churches, monasteries, and convents at this date, although but little respect was shown for the refugees, whose hiding-places were often surrounded so that they might be kept without food and forced to surrender.  After being considerably restricted by an edict issued in 1515, the right of sanctuary was abolished by Francis I. in 1539.—­B.  J. and D.

     9 Prostitutes were debarred from giving evidence in French
     courts of law at this period.—­D.