"Have you seen these letters?"

"Here they are."

René took a paper from his pocket, and presented it to the queen, who hastily opened it.

"An m and an o," said she.

"Can it be, after all, M. de la Mole—and that the confession of Marguerite's was only to avert suspicion?"

"Madame," returned René, "if I may venture an opinion, I should say M. de la Mole is too much in love to trouble his head about politics; and, above all, too much in love with madame Marguerite to serve her husband very devotedly, for there is no deep love without jealousy.

"You think him in love, then?"

"Desperately."

"Has he had recourse to you?"

Yes; I made him a waxen image." "Pierced to the heart?"

"To the heart."

"Have you it still?"

"At my house."

"I wonder," said Catherine, "if these cabalistic preparations have really the power attributed to them?"

"Your majesty knows even more than I what their influence is."

"Does Marguerite love la Mole?"

"Sufficiently to ruin herself for him. Yesterday she saved him at the risk of her honour and her life; you see all this, and yet you doubt."

"Doubt what?" "Science."

"I doubt, because science has deceived me," looking fixedly at René.

"On what occasion?"

René, have your perfumes lost their odour?"

"No, madame; not when I

prepare them."

"Well, well," said Catherine, "we will speak of that some other time. Tell me what is necessary to arrive at an idea of the probable length of a person's life?"

"To know, first, the day of his birth, his age, and what constellation he was born under."

"Next?"

"To have some of his blood and hair."

"If I bring and tell you all you require, can you tell me the probable time of his death?"

"Yes, within a few days."

“I have his hair, and I will procure some of his blood." "Was he born in the day, or during the night?"

"At twenty-three minutes past five in the evening." "Be with me to-morrow at five o'clock; the experiment must be made at the precise hour of the birth."

66

"Good!" said Catherine. "We will be there."

René saluted, and retired without affecting to notice the “we,” which indicated that, contrary to her usual habits, the queen would not come alone.

The next morning, at daybreak, Catherine entered her son Charles's apartment; she had inquired after him at midnight, and was informed that maître Ambroise Paré was with him, and intended bleeding him if the same nervous agitation continued.

Shuddering even in his slumbers, pale from loss of blood, Charles slept, his head resting on his faithful nurse's shoulder, who, leaning against the bed, had not changed her position for three hours, fearing to disturb him.

The nurse

Catherine asked if her son had not been bled. replied he had, and so abundantly that he had twice fainted.

The blood was in a basin in the adjoining room; Catherine entered, under pretence of examining it, and whilst so doing, she filled with it a phial she had brought with her for the purpose, then returned, hiding her red fingers, that would otherwise have betrayed her, in her pockets.

As she re-appeared, Charles opened his eyes, and perceived his mother; then recollecting the events of the previous evening

"Ah! it is you, madame," said he; "well, you may tell your dear son, Henry d'Anjou, it will be to-morrow."

"It shall be when you please, my dear Charles; compose yourself, and go to sleep."

Charles closed his eyes, and Catherine left the room, but no sooner had she quitted it than Charles, raising himself, cried

"Send for the chancellor-the court-I want them all!" The nurse replaced his head upon her shoulder, and sought to lull him to sleep.

X

"No, no, nurse!" said he, "I shall not sleep any more. Summon my people; I wish to work to-day."

When Charles spoke thus, no one dared disobey, and even the nurse, spite of the familiarity she enjoyed, did not venture to dispute his orders. The chancellor was summoned, and the audience fixed, not for the morrow, but for the fifth day from that time.

At five o'clock, the queen and the duke d'Anjou proceeded to René's, who, in expectation of their visit, had prepared everything for the experiment.

In the chamber on the right, that is, in the chamber of sacrifice, a blade of steel, covered with singular arabesques, was heating in a brasier of charcoal. On the altar lay the book of fate, and as the previous night had been very clear, René had been enabled to consult the stars.

Henry d'Anjou entered first. He had false hair, and his face and figure were concealed beneath a mask and large cloak. His mother followed him, and had she not been aware of his disguise, would not have recognised him. The queen took off her mask; d'Anjou, however, did not follow her example.

"Have you consulted the stars?" asked Catherine.

"I have, madame, and they have already informed me of the past. The person whose fate you desire to know has, like all persons born under Cancer, a fiery and ardent disposition; he is powerful, he has lived nearly a quarter of a century, Heaven has granted him wealth and power-is it not so, madame?"

Perhaps."

"Have you his hair and blood?” "Here they are."

And Catherine gave the magician a lock of fair hair and a smalı phial of blood.

René took the phial, shook it, and let fall on the glowing steel blade a large drop of blood that boiled for a second, and then spread itself into a thousand fantastic shapes.

"Oh!" cried René, "I see him convulsed with agony. Hark! how he groans-see, how all around him turns to blood -see how around his death-bed combats and wars arise; and see, here are the lances and swords!"

"Will this be long first?" asked Catherine, seizing the hand

of her son, who, in his anxiety to see, had leaned over the brasier.

René approached the altar, and repeated a cabalistic prayer; then he rose, and announcing all was ready, took in one hand the phial and in the other the lock of hair, and bidding Catherine open at hazard the book of fate, he poured on the steel blade all the blood and cast the hair in the fire, pronouncing a mystic formula as he did so.

Instantly the duke d'Anjou and Catherine saw on the blade a figure resembling a corpse wrapped in a winding-sheet. Another figure, that of a woman, leaned over it.

At the same time, the hair burned, casting out one jet of flame like a fiery tongue.

"A year," cried René-" scarce a year, and this man shall die! One woman alone shall lament over him, and yet, no: at the end of the blade is another female, with an infant in her arms."

Catherine looked at her son, as if, though herself the mother of the man whose death was announced, she would ask him who these two women could be.

But scarcely had René finished, when the forms disappeared.

Then Catherine opened the book at hazard, and read with a voice that trembled in spite of herself, the following distich:

"Ainsi a peri cil que l'on redoutoit,
Plutost, trop tost, si prudence n'etoit."

"And for him that you wot of," said Catherine, "what say the signs?"

"Favourable as ever: unless Providence interpose to thwart his destiny, he is sure to be fortunate, but

But, what?"

"One of the stars composing his pleiad was covered by a black cloud during my observations.

66

Ah, a black cloud!—but there is some hope!"

"Of whom speak you, madame?" asked d'Anjou.

Catherine drew her son on one side, and spoke to him in a low voice.

During this interval, René, kneeling by the brasier, poured into the hollow of his hand the last drop of blood.

"Strange," murmured he.

"It only proves how little can human knowledge compete with ours. To every one but me, even to Ambroise Paré, this blood so pure, so full of health, promises years of life, and yet all will be useless ere a year expire.

Catherine and Henry turned and listened.

"Ah,” continued René, " to the uninitiated the present is manifest, but to us the future is also manifest."

"He will die, then, before the year be over?" said the queen-mother.

66

As surely as there are three persons present who must one day repose in the grave."

"Yet you say the blood indicates a long life?"

"Yes, if things were to follow the natural course; but an accident

"Ah, yes," whispered Catherine to Henry-"an accident." "The greater reason for staying."

"Oh, that is impossible."

Then turning to René

"Thanks," said the young man, disguising the tone of his voice; "take this purse."

"Come, count," said Catherine, purposely using this title, to divert René's suspicions.

And they left the chamber.

66

Mother," cried Henry, " you hear?—an accident: should it happen, I shall be four hundred leagues away."

"Four hundred leagues may be accomplished in eight

days."

"Yes; but who knows if they will suffer me to return." "Who knows,” replied the queen, "but this illness of the king's may be the accident of which René spoke. Go, Henry, go, and beware of irritating your brother, should you see him."