from hunting, undressed, and fell asleep in an arm chair, within a few feet of the assassins.  Whether it was that they were alarmed by the sound of footsteps, or that the solemn contrast of the peaceful slumber of this prince with the death that threatened him, softened their hearts, they again abandoned their project, and only revealed this circumstance on their trial after the assassination, when the king acknowledged the truth and precision of their details.  They were ready to renounce their intention, discouraged by a sort of divine intervention, and by the fatigue of having so long meditated this design in vain, when a fatal occasion tempted them too strongly, and made them resolve on the murder of the king.

VI.

A masked ball was given at the opera, which the king was to attend, and the conspirators resolved to take advantage of the mystery of the disguise and tumult of the fete to strike the blow, without allowing the hand to appear.  A short time before the ball the king supped with a few of his most intimate courtiers.  A letter was brought to him, which he opened, and reading it jestingly, then threw it on the table.  The anonymous writer informed him that he was neither a friend to his person nor an approver of his policy, but that as a loyal enemy he desired to inform him of the death that menaced him.  He counselled him not to go to the ball; or, if he persisted, he advised him to mistrust the crowd that might press around him, for that was the signal for the blow to be aimed at him.  That the king might not doubt the warning thus given, he recalled to his memory his dress, gesture, his sleep in his apartment of Haga in the evening that he had believed himself quite alone.  Such convincing proofs must have struck and intimidated the mind of the prince, but his intrepid soul made him brave, not only the warning, but death:  he rose and went to the ball.

VII.

Scarcely had he reached the apartment, when he was surrounded, as he had been warned, by a group of masks, and separated, as if by preconcerted movement, from the body of officers who were in attendance.  At this moment an invisible hand fired at his back a pistol loaded with slugs.  The blow struck him in the left flank above the hip.  Gustavus fell into the arms of Count d’Armsfeld, his favourite.  The report of the fire arm, the smell of powder, the cries of “fire,” which resounded through the apartment, the confusion which followed the king’s fall, the real or feigned anxiety of persons who hurried forward to save him, favoured the escape of the assassins:  the pistol had been dropped on the ground.  Gustavus did not lose his presence of mind for a moment.  He ordered the doors to be immediately closed, and desired all to unmask.  Carried by his guards into an apartment in the opera-house, he was confided to his surgeons.  He admitted some of the foreign ministers into his presence, and spoke to them with all the calmness of a strong mind.  Even his pain did not inspire him with any feeling of vengeance.  Generous even in death, he demanded anxiously if the assassin had been apprehended.  He was told that he was unknown.  “Oh God, grant,” he said, “that he may not be discovered.”