“Alas! madame,” said Ambroise, “I am under the direction of these gentlemen.”

The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and the other persons present.  The chief physician held the king’s head, and Ambroise made the injection into the ear.  The duke and the cardinal watched the proceeding attentively.  Robertet and Monsieur de Maille stood motionless.  Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine, glided unperceived from the room.  A moment later l’Hopital boldly opened the door of the king’s chamber.

“I arrive in good time,” said the voice of a man whose hasty steps echoed through the great hall, and who stood the next moment on the threshold of the open door.  “Ah, messieurs, so you meant to take off the head of my good nephew, the Prince de Conde?  Instead of that, you have forced the lion from his lair and—­here I am!” added the Connetable de Montmorency.  “Ambroise, you shall not plunge your knife into the head of my king.  The first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon, the Prince de Conde, the queen-mother, the Connetable, and the chancellor forbid the operation.”

To Catherine’s great satisfaction, the king of Navarre and the Prince de Conde now entered the room.

“What does this mean?” said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on his dagger.

“It means that in my capacity as Connetable, I have dismissed the sentinels of all your posts. Tete Dieu! you are not in an enemy’s country, methinks.  The king, our master, is in the midst of his loyal subjects, and the States-general must be suffered to deliberate at liberty.  I come, messieurs, from the States-general.  I carried the protest of my nephew de Conde before that assembly, and three hundred of those gentlemen have released him.  You wish to shed royal blood and to decimate the nobility of the kingdom, do you?  Ha! in future, I defy you, and all your schemes, Messieurs de Lorraine.  If you order the king’s head opened, by this sword which saved France from Charles V., I say it shall not be done—­”

“All the more,” said Ambroise Pare; “because it is now too late; the suffusion has begun.”

“Your reign is over, messieurs,” said Catherine to the Guises, seeing from Pare’s face that there was no longer any hope.

“Ah! madame, you have killed your own son,” cried Mary Stuart as she bounded like a lioness from the bed to the window and seized the queen-mother by the arm, gripping it violently.

“My dear,” replied Catherine, giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six months, to overflow; “you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death, you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start to-morrow.  I am regent de facto.”  The three physicians having made her a sign, “Messieurs,” she added, addressing the Guises, “it is agreed between Monsieur de Bourbon, appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom by the States-general, and me that the conduct of the affairs of the State is our business solely.  Come, monsieur le chancelier.”