THE VALOIS SAGA: Queen Margot, Chicot de Jester & The Forty-Five Guardsmen (Historical Novels). Alexandre Dumas

beginning to comprehend.

      “Oh! oh!” he cried, “kill the King of Navarre?”

      “Why, who is speaking of killing him? Where is the order to kill him? The King wishes him taken to the Bastille, and the order contains nothing more. If he lets himself be arrested, very good; but as he will not let himself be arrested, as he will resist, as he will endeavor to kill you”—

      Maurevel grew paler.

      “You will defend yourself,” continued Catharine. “One cannot ask a brave man like you to let himself be killed without defending himself; and in defending yourself, what can you expect? You must let come what may. You understand me, do you not?”

      “Yes, madame; and yet”—

      “Come, do you want me to write dead or alive after the words order to arrest?”

      “I confess, madame, that that would do away with my scruples.”

      “Well, it must be done, of course, since you do not think the order can be carried out without it.”

      And Catharine shrugged her shoulders, unrolled the parchment with one hand, and wrote with the other: “dead or alive.”

      “Now,” said she, “do you consider the order all right?”

      “Yes, madame,” replied Maurevel; “but I beg your majesty to leave the carrying out of the entire affair to me.”

      “What have I said that will interfere with it?”

      “Your majesty told me to take a dozen men.”

      “Yes, to make sure”—

      “Well, I ask permission to take only six.”

      “Why so?”

      “Because, madame, if anything happens to the prince, as it probably will, it would be easy to excuse six men for having been afraid of losing the prisoner, but no one would excuse a dozen guards for not having let half of their number be killed before laying hands on royalty.”

      “Fine royalty, in truth, which has no kingdom.”

      “Madame,” said Maurevel, “it is not the kingdom which makes the king: it is birth.”

      “Very well,” said Catharine; “do as you please. Only I must warn you that I do not wish you to leave the Louvre.”

      “But, madame, to get my men together?”

      “Have you not a sort of sergeant whom you can charge with this duty?”

      “I have my lackey, who not only is a faithful fellow, but who has even occasionally aided me in this sort of thing.”

      “Send for him, and confer with him. You know the chamber hung with the King’s arms, do you not? Well, your breakfast shall be served there; and from there you shall give your orders. The place will aid you to collect your wits in case they are scattered. Then when my son returns from the hunt, you are to go into my oratory, and wait until the time comes.”

      “But how are we to get into the room? Probably the king suspects something, and he will shut himself up in it.”

      “I have a duplicate key to every door,” said Catharine, “and the bolts have been removed from Henry’s room. Adieu, Monsieur de Maurevel, for a while. I will have you taken to the King’s armory. Ah! by the way! remember that the order of a King must be carried out before anything else. No excuse is admissible; a defeat, even a failure, would compromise the honor of the King. It is a serious matter.”

      And Catharine, without giving Maurevel time to answer, called Monsieur de Nancey, the captain of the guards, and ordered him to conduct Maurevel to the king’s armory.

      “My God!” exclaimed Maurevel as he followed his guide, “I have risen to the hierarchy of assassination; from a simple gentleman to a captain, from a captain to an admiral, from an admiral to a king without a crown. Who knows if I shall not some day be a king with a crown!”

      Chapter 31.

       The Hunt.

       Table of Contents

      The outrider who had turned aside the boar and who had told the King that the animal had not left the place was not mistaken. Scarcely were the bloodhounds put on the trail before it plunged into the thickets, and from a cluster of thorn bushes drove out the boar which the outrider had recognized by its track. It was a recluse; that is, the strangest kind of animal.

      It started straight ahead and crossed the road fifty feet from the King, followed only by the bloodhound which had driven it back. The first relay of dogs was at once let loose, twenty in number, which sprang after it.

      Hunting was Charles’ chief passion. Scarcely had the animal crossed the road before he started after it, followed by the Duc d’Alençon and Henry, to whom a sign had indicated that he must not leave Charles.

      The rest of the hunters followed the King.

      At the time of which we are writing, the royal forests were far from being what they are today, great parks intersected by carriage roads. Then traffic was almost wanting. Kings had not yet conceived the idea of being merchants, and of dividing their woods into fellings, copses, and forests. The trees, planted, not by learned foresters, but by the hand of God, who threw the grain to the will of the winds, were not arranged in quincunxes, but grew as they pleased, as they do today in any virginal forest of America. In short, a forest in those days was a den of the wild boar, the stag, the wolf, and robbers; and a dozen paths starting from one point starred that of Bondy, surrounded by a circular road as the circle of a wheel surrounds its fellies.

      To carry the comparison further, the nave would not be a bad representation of the single point where the parties meet in the centre of the wood, where the wandering hunters rally to start out again towards the point where the lost animal again appears.

      At the end of a quarter of an hour there happened what always happens in such cases. Insurmountable obstacles rose in the path of the hunters, the cries of the dogs were lost in the distance, and the King returned to the meeting-place cursing and swearing as was his habit.

      “Well, D’Alençon! Well, Henriot!” said he, “there you are, by Heaven, as calm and unruffled as nuns following their abbess. That is not hunting. Why, D’Alençon, you look as though you had just stepped out of a band-box, and you are so saturated with perfumery that if you were to pass between the boar and my dogs, you might put them off the scent. And you, Henry, where is your spear, your musket? Let us see!”

      “Sire,” said Henry, “of what use is a musket? I know that your Majesty likes to shoot the beast when the dogs have caught it. As to a spear, I am clumsy enough with this weapon, which is not much used among our mountains, where we hunt the bear with a simple dagger.”

      “By Heavens, Henry, when you return to your Pyrenees you will have to send me a whole cartload of bears. It must be a pretty hunt that is carried on at such close quarters with an animal which might strangle us. Listen, I think I hear the dogs. No, I am mistaken.” The King took his horn and blew a blast; several horns answered him. Suddenly an outrider appeared who blew another blast.

      “The boar! the boar!” cried the King.

      He galloped off, followed by the rest of the hunters who had rallied round him.

      The outrider was not mistaken. As the King advanced they began to hear the barking of the pack, which consisted of more than sixty dogs, for one after another they had let loose all the relays placed at the points the boar had already passed. The King saw the boar again, and taking advantage of a clump of high trees, he rushed after him, blowing his horn with all his might.

      For some time the princes followed him. But the King had such a strong horse and was so carried away by his ardor, and he rode over such rough roads and through