The House of Austria, without making any military preparations, had conquered, and the great war of religion and politics was postponed for half a dozen years.
This history has no immediate concern with solving the mysteries of that stupendous crime.

The woman who had sought to save the King's life now denounced Epernon as the chief murderer, and was arrested, examined, accused of lunacy, proved to be perfectly sane, and, persisting in her statements with perfect coherency, was imprisoned for life for her pains; the Duke furiously demanding her instant execution.
The documents connected with the process were carefully suppressed.

The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses, was supposed to have revealed nothing and to have denied the existence of accomplices.
The great accused were too omnipotent to be dealt with by humble accusers or by convinced but powerless tribunals.

The trial was all mystery, hugger-mugger, horror.

Yet the murderer is known to have dictated to the Greflier Voisin, just before expiring on the Greve, a declaration which that functionary took down in a handwriting perhaps purposely illegible.
Two centuries and a half have passed away, yet the illegible original record is said to exist, to have been plainly read, and to contain the names of the Queen and the Duke of Epernon.
Twenty-six years before, the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had destroyed the foremost man in Europe and the chief of a commonwealth just struggling into existence.