The Chevalier de Ribaumont came daily to inquire; and the first time he was admitted actually burst into tears at the sight of the swollen disfigured face, and the long mark on the arm which lay half-uncovered.  Presents of delicacies, ointments, and cooling drinks were frequently sent from him and from the Countess de Selinville; but Lady Walsingham distrusted these, and kept her guest strictly to the regimen appointed by Pare.  Now and then, billets would likewise come.  The first brought a vivid crimson into Berenger’s face, and both it and all its successors he instantly tore into the smallest fragments, without letting any one see them.

On the day of the Carnival, the young men of the household had asked Master Thistlewood to come out with them and see the procession of the Boeuf Gras; but before it could take place, reports were flying about that put the city in commotion, caused the Ambassador to forbid all going out, and made Philip expect another Huguenot massacre.  The Duke of Alencon and the King of Navarre had been detected, it was said, in a conspiracy for overthrowing the power of the Queen-mother, bringing in the Huguenots, and securing the crown to Alencon on the King’s death.  Down-stairs, the Ambassador and his secretaries sat anxiously striving to sift the various contradictory reports; up-stairs, Philip and Lady Walsingham were anxiously watching Berenger in what seemed the long-expected crisis, and Philip was feeling as if all the French court were welcome to murder one another so that they would only let Ambroise Pare come to his brother’s relief.  And it was impossible even to send!

At last, however, when Ash-Wednesday was half over, there was a quiet movement, and a small pale man in black was at the bedside, without Philip’s having ever seen his entrance.  He looked at his exhausted patient, and said, ’It is well; I could not have done you any good before.’

And when he had set Berenger more at ease, he told how great had been the confusion at St. Germain when the plot had become known to the Queen-mother.  The poor King had been wakened at two o’clock in the morning, and carried to his litter, when Pare and his old nurse had tended him.  He only said, ‘Can they not let me die in peace?’ and his weakness had been so great on arriving, that the surgeon could hardly have left him for M. de Ribaumont, save by his own desire.  ‘Yes, sir,’ added Pare, seeing Berenger attending to him, ’we must have you well quickly; his Majesty knows all about you, and is anxious to see you.’

In spite of these good wishes, the recovery was very slow; for, as the surgeon had suspected, the want of skill in those who had had the charge of Berenger at the first had been the cause of much of his protracted suffering.  Pare, the inventor of trephining, was, perhaps, the only man in Europe who could have dealt with the fracture in the back of the head, and he likewise extracted the remaining splinters of the