"It has not," Henry answered kindly. "The light is gone. But
have him looked to, will you, my friend? If La Riviere were here
he might do something for him."

While he spoke, the servants had gathered round the man, but with
the timidity which characterises that class in such emergencies,
they would not touch him. As I crossed the court, and they made
way for me, the Spaniard, who was still standing, though in a
strange and distorted fashion, turned his bloodshot eyes on me.

"A priest!" he muttered, framing the words with difficulty, "a
priest!"

I directed Maignan to fetch one. "And do you," I continued to
the other servants, "take him into a room somewhere."

They obeyed, reluctantly. As they carried him out, the King,
content with my statement, was giving his hand to Mademoiselle to
descend the stairs; and neither he nor any, save the two men in
my confidence, had the slightest suspicion that aught was the
matter beyond a natural illness. But I shuddered when I
considered how narrow had been the King's escape, how trifling
the circumstance which had led to suspicion, how fortuitous the
inspiration by which I had chanced on discovery. The delay of a
single day, the occurrence of the slightest mishap, might have
been fatal not to him only but to the best interests of France;
which his death at a time when he was still childless must have
plunged into the most melancholy of wars.