of the barricades; for now, so long as the new generalissimo should live,
the luckless Henry felt himself a superfluity in his own realm. The
halcyon days were for ever past, when, protected by the swords of Joyeuse
and of Epernon, the monarch of France could pass his life playing at cup
and ball, or snipping images out of pasteboard, or teaching his parrots-
to talk, or his lap-dogs to dance. His royal occupations were gone, and
murder now became a necessary preliminary to any future tranquillity or
enjoyment. Discrowned as he felt himself already, he knew that life or
liberty was only held by him now at the will of Guise. The assassination
of the Duke in December was the necessary result of the barricades in
May; and accordingly that assassination was arranged with an artistic
precision of which the world had hardly suspected the Valois to be
capable, and which Philip himself might have envied.

The story of the murders of Blois--the destruction of Guise and his
brother the Cardinal, and the subsequent imprisonment of the Archbishop
of Lyons, the Cardinal Bourbon, and the Prince de Joinville, now, through
the death of his father, become the young Duke of Guise--all these events
are too familiar in the realms of history, song, romance, and painting,
to require more than this slight allusion here.

Never had an assassination been more technically successful; yet its
results were not commensurate with the monarch's hopes. The deed which
he had thought premature in May was already too late in December. His
mother denounced his cruelty now, as she had, six months before,
execrated his cowardice. And the old Queen, seeing that her game was
played out--that the cards had all gone against her--that her son was
doomed, and her own influence dissolved in air, felt that there was
nothing left for her but to die. In a week she was dead, and men spoke
no more of Catharine de' Medici, and thought no more of her than if--in