roof are lodging-rooms and a gallery which have no windows except on the courtyard, so that in order to see what was going on within, it was necessary to go where no man before ever dreamed of climbing,—­along the coping of a high wall which adjoins the roof of Rene’s house.  The men who set up in that house the furnaces by which they distil death, reckoned on the cowardice of Parisians to save them from being overlooked; but they little thought of Charles de Valois!  I crept along the coping until I came to a window, against the casing of which I was able to stand up straight with my arm round a carved monkey which ornamented it.”

“What did you see, dear heart?” said Marie, trembling.

“A den, where works of darkness were being done,” replied the king.  “The first object on which my eyes lighted was a tall old man seated in a chair, with a magnificent white beard, like that of old l’Hopital, and dressed like him in a black velvet robe.  On his broad forehead furrowed deep with wrinkles, on his crown of white hair, on his calm, attentive face, pale with toil and vigils, fell the concentrated rays of a lamp from which shone a vivid light.  His attention was divided between an old manuscript, the parchment of which must have been centuries old, and two lighted furnaces on which heretical compounds were cooking.  Neither the floor nor the ceiling of the laboratory could be seen, because of the myriads of hanging skeletons, bodies of animals, dried plants, minerals, and articles of all kinds that masked the walls; while on the floor were books, instruments for distilling, chests filled with utensils for magic and astrology; in one place I saw horoscopes and nativities, phials, wax-figures under spells, and possibly poisons.  Tavannes and I were fascinated, I do assure you, by the sight of this devil’s-arsenal.  Only to see it puts one under a spell, and if I had not been King of France, I might have been awed by it.  ’You can tremble for both of us,’ I whispered to Tavannes.  But Tavannes’ eyes were already caught by the most mysterious feature of the scene.  On a couch, near the old man, lay a girl of strangest beauty,—­slender and long like a snake, white as ermine, livid as death, motionless as a statue.  Perhaps it was a woman just taken from her grave, on whom they were trying experiments, for she seemed to wear a shroud; her eyes were fixed, and I could not see that she breathed.  The old fellow paid no attention to her.  I looked at him so intently that, after a while, his soul seemed to pass into mine.  By dint of studying him, I ended by admiring the glance of his eye,—­so keen, so profound, so bold, in spite of the chilling power of age.  I admired his mouth, mobile with thoughts emanating from a desire which seemed to be the solitary desire of his soul, and was stamped upon every line of the face.  All things in that man expressed a hope which nothing discouraged, and nothing could check.  His attitude,—­a quivering immovability,—­those outlines so free, carved