Not unnaturally, too, for even the Wolf could scarcely have found it in his heart to hurt our cousin.

Her slight willowy figure, her pale oval face and gentle brown eyes, her pleasant voice, her kindness, seemed to us boys and in those days, to sum up all that was womanly.

We could not remember, not even Croisette the youngest of us--who was seventeen, a year junior to Marie and myself--we were twins--the time when we had not been in love with her.
But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday stillness of that afternoon.

It was the summer of 1572.

The great peace, it will be remembered, between the Catholics and the Huguenots had not long been declared; the peace which in a day or two was to be solemnized, and, as most Frenchmen hoped, to be cemented by the marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois, the King's sister.