going to happen in Paris before daylight as surely as the sun was going to rise!  I knew that the Huguenot nobles were present in the city in great numbers, but it did not occur to me that they could as a body be in danger.  They were many and powerful, and as was said, in favour with the king.  They were under the protection of the King of Navarre—­France’s brother-in-law of a week, and the Prince of Conde; and though these princes were young, Coligny the sagacious admiral was old, and not much the worse I had learned for his wound.  He at least was high in royal favour, a trusted counsellor.  Had not the king visited him on his sick-bed and sat by him for an hour together?

Surely, I thought, if there were danger, these men would know of it.  And then the Huguenots’ main enemy, Henri le Balafre, the splendid Duke of Guise, “our great man,” and “Lorraine,” as the crowd called him—­he, it was rumoured, was in disgrace at court.  In a word these things, to say nothing of the peaceful and joyous occasion which had brought the Huguenots to Paris, and which seemed to put treachery out of the question, were more than enough to prevent me forecasting the event.

If for a moment, indeed, as I hurried along towards the river, anything like the truth occurred to me, I put it from me.  I say with pride I put it from me as a thing impossible.  For God forbid—­one may speak out the truth these forty years back—­God forbid, say I, that all Frenchmen should bear the blood guiltiness which came of other than French brains, though French were the hands that did the work.

I was not greatly troubled by my forebodings therefore:  and the state of exaltation to which Madame d’O’s confidence had raised my spirits lasted until one of the narrow streets by the Louvre brought me suddenly within sight of the river.  Here faint moonlight bursting momentarily through the clouds was shining on the placid surface of the water.  The fresh air played upon, and cooled my temples.  And this with the quiet scene so abruptly presented to me, gave check to my thoughts, and somewhat sobered me.

At some distance to my left I could distinguish in the middle of the river the pile of buildings which crowd the Ile de la Cite, and could follow the nearer arm of the stream as it swept landwards of these, closely hemmed in by houses, but unbroken as yet by the arches of the Pont Neuf which I have lived to see built.  Not far from me on my right—­indeed within a stone’s throw—­the bulky mass of the Louvre rose dark and shapeless against the sky.  Only a narrow open space—­the foreshore—­ separated me from the water; beyond which I could see an irregular line of buildings, that no doubt formed the Faubourg St. Germain.

I had been told that I should find stairs leading down to the water, and boats moored at the foot of them, at this point.  Accordingly I walked quickly across the open space to a spot, where I made out a couple of posts set up on the brink—­ doubtless to mark the landing place.