But--" and Louis' form dilated and his hand rose as he went on, and I thought of his cousin's prediction--"it will never be so again in France, Anne! Never! No man will after this trust another! There will be no honour, no faith, no quarter, and no peace! And for the Valois who has done this, the sword will never depart from his house! I believe it! I do believe it!" How truly he spoke we know now.

For two-and-twenty years after that twenty-fourth of August, 1572, the sword was scarcely laid aside in France for a single month.

In the streets of Paris, at Arques, and Coutras, and Ivry, blood flowed like water that the blood of the St.
Bartholomew might be forgotten--that blood which, by the grace of God, Navarre saw fall from the dice box on the eve of the massacre.

The last of the Valois passed to the vaults of St.Denis: and a greater king, the first of all Frenchmen, alive or dead, the bravest, gayest, wisest of the land, succeeded him: yet even he had to fall by the knife, in a moment most unhappy for his country, before France, horror-stricken, put away the treachery and evil from her.
Talking with Louis as we rode, it was not unnatural--nay, it was the natural result of the situation--that I should avoid one subject.

Yet that subject was the uppermost in my thoughts.