It was almost all that was left to please him--that, and to die proudly as he had lived.

But as the day wore on, and the room grew hot and close, and the pain in his thigh became more grievous, the frame of his mind altered.

A sombre rage was born and grew in him, and a passion fierce and ill-suppressed.

To end thus, with nothing done, nothing accomplished of all his hopes and ambitions! To die thus, crushed in a corner by a mean priest and a rabble of spearmen, he who had seen Dreux and Jarnac, had defied the King, and dared to turn the St.Bartholomew to his ends! To die thus, and leave her to that puppet! Strong man as he was, of a strength of will surpassed by few, it taxed him to the utmost to lie and make no sign.

Once, indeed, he raised himself on his elbow with something between an oath and a snarl, and he seemed about to speak.