Eustacie would have risen, but the two sisters had fluttered back, impatient to lose nothing of the sports; and her cousin in his grim disguise stood full before her.  ‘No haste, cousin,’ he said; ’you are not fit to move.’

‘Oh, then go,’ said Eustacie, suffering too much not to be petulant.  ‘You make me worse.’

‘And why?  It was not always thus,’ began Narcisse, so eager to seize an opportunity as to have little consideration for her condition; but she was unable to bear any more, and broke out:  ’Yes, it was; I always detested you more than ever, since you deceived me so cruelly.  Oh, do but leave me!’

’You scorn me, then!  You prefer to me—­who have loved you so long--that childish new-comer, who was ready enough to cast you off.’

’Prefer!  He is my husband!  It is an insult for any one else to speak to me thus!’ said Eustacie, drawing herself up, and rising to her feet; but she was forced to hold by the back of her chair, and Diane and her father appearing at that moment, she tottered towards the former, and becoming quite passive under the influence of violent dizziness and headache, made no objection to being half led, half carried, through galleries that connected the Hotel de Bourbon with the Louvre.

And thus it was that when Berenger had fought out his part in the melle of the prisoners released, and had maintained the honours of the rose-coloured token in his helmet, he found that his lady-love had been obliged by indisposition to return home; and while he stood, folding his arms to restrain their strong inclination to take Narcisse by the throat and demand whether this were another of his deceptions, a train of fireworks suddenly exploded in the middle of the Styx—­a last surprise, especially contrived by King Charles, and so effectual that half the ladies were shrieking, and imagining that they and the whole hall had blown up together.

A long supper, full of revelry, succeeded, and at length Sidney ad Ribaumont walked home together in the midst of their armed servants bearing torches.  All the way home Berenger was bitter in vituperation of the hateful pageant and all its details.

‘Yea, truly,’ replied Sidney; ’methought that it betokens disease in the mind of a nation when their festive revelry is thus ghastly, rendering the most awful secrets made known by our God in order to warm man from sin into a mere antic laughing-stock.  Laughter should be moved by what is fair and laughter-worthy—­even like such sports as our own “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  I have read that the bloody temper of Rome fed itself in gladiator shows, and verily, what we beheld to-night betokens something at once grisly and light-minded in the mood of this country.’

Sidney thought so the more when on the second ensuing morning the Admiral de Coligny was shot through both hands by an assassin generally known to have been posted by the Duke of Guise, yet often called by the sinister sobriquet of Le Tueur de Roi.