“Madame,” said Francois II., “is it not enough for the king of France to know that so much brave blood is to flow?  Must he make a triumph of it?”

“No, sire; but an example,” replied Catherine.

“It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present at the burning of heretics,” said Mary Stuart.

“The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I choose to do as I please,” said the little king.

“Philip the Second,” remarked Catherine, “who is certainly a great king, lately postponed an auto da fe until he could return from the Low Countries to Valladolid.”

“What do you think, cousin?” said the king to Prince de Conde.

“Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the ambassadors should be present.  I shall go willingly, as these ladies take part in the fete.”

Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de’ Medici, bravely chose his course.

* * * * *

At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau d’Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier.  When the old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of the guard, on hearing that he was the queens’ furrier, said:—­

“My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in this courtyard.”

Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son.  But he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where the executions took place.  He was obliged to pay a pound a day to obtain a room with a window looking on the square.  The next day he had the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel or hanged, as persons of little importance.  He was happy indeed not to see his own son among the victims.

When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in the way of the clerk of the court.  After giving his name, and slipping a purse full of crowns into the man’s hand, he begged him to look on the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in either of the three preceding executions.  The clerk, touched by the manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own house.  After a careful search he was able to give the old man an absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few days.