University of Virginia Library

4. PART IV.

The morning of that fatal day had arrived, the horror and
atrocity of which may never be forgotten or forgiven, until the
records of humanity itself shall pass away. That day, which,
intended as it was by the infernal policy of France to strike a
death-blow to the reformed religion throughout the world, did
more to unite, to strengthen, and finally to establish the ascendency
of that religion, than could have been established by
the arms of its champions, or the arguments of its professors,
in centuries of unopposed prosperity; as though the fiend who
suggested the counsel had deserted his pupils in very derision
of their blind iniquity. Nor in truth was the hallucination of
the confiding Huguenots less unaccountable than the unearthly
wickedness of their opponents. It would seem that their eyes
had been so completely sealed up, and their suspicions so
obliterated by the marriage of the youthful monarch of Navarre
with the sister of the faithless Charles, that no proof, however
flagrant, of the meditated treason could awake them from their
slumbers. Nor, when De Coligni was well-nigh assassinated

by the aim of an enemy,[9] less scrupulous than the knight of
Bothwelhaugh, could they be aroused, either by the crime itself,
or by the eloquence which it called forth from the Vidame
of Chartres, to see in this attempt “the first act of an hideous
tragedy.”[10] Never were the extraordinary talents of the queen-mother
more evident, or more successful, than in the series of
intrigues, by which the protestant leaders were amused, until
the scheme for their destruction was matured; and it is most
remarkable that the very measures by which she lulled their
fears to rest, were those which laid them most completely at
the mercy of their persecutors. It was recommended by
Charles that the principal gentlemen of the party should take
up their quarters around the lodging of the wounded admiral,
avowedly that they might be ever at hand to protect him from
the machinations of his foes, but in truth that being thus collected
into one body they might be butchered at ease without
a hope of resistance, or a possibility of escape. A guard of
honor was appointed from the musqueteers of the royal household
to watch over the safety of De Coligni, but this very guard
was under the command of Cosseins, his most deadly enemy;
and lastly, with unparalleled baseness, Charles and his fiendish
mother actually paid a visit of condolence at the bedside of
the man, whom they had doomed to a miserable and disgraceful
end.

All was at length prepared; the duke of Guise selected, as

the chief most fitted for the conduct of the massacre; the captains
of the Swiss companies and the Italian condottieri were
harangued and loaded with reward; the dizeniers of the burgher
guards were privately instructed to arm their men in all the
quarters of the city, to assume, as distinctive ensigns, a white
cross in their hats, and white scarfs on their arms, to kindle
flambeaux in every window, and when the palace-clock should
sound, as it was wont to do, at break of day — to fall on and
leave no Huguenot alive within the walls of Paris. Nor was
this all; in every town throughout the realm, like orders had
been despatched by certain hands to all the catholic governors,
so that the striking of that bell in the metropolis, should be
repeated from every tower in France at the same hour, a signal
for simultaneous massacre, a knell for thousands and tens of
thousands of her bravest and her best. One circumstance,
however, had occurred, which in no slight degree embarrassed
the proceedings of the royal executioners, and it needed all
the influence of Catharine to hold her weaker, yet no less
wicked, son firm to his resolution.

The whole day succeeding to their interview with Hamilton
had been spent by that bad pair in expectation amounting
almost to agony. In obedience to the mandate of his master,
De Crespigny had departed with three ruffians of the guard, to
seal the tongue of Bothwelhaugh for ever. The gates of Paris
had been closed, and the escape of the victim seemed impossible,
nor could it be imagined for a moment that one unsupported
foreigner could successfully resist the arms of four
assailants selected for their skill, no less than for their ferocity.
Still, hour after hour crept along, and no tidings arrived of the
success or failure of the enterprise, till on the very morning
of the intended massacre, the stiff and mangled corpses of all
the four were discovered among the shrubbery of the royal
gardens, bearing fearful marks, on head and trunk, of the tremendous

weapon which had laid them low. That they had
perished by the hand of Hamilton was evident, but to the
means by which one man had defeated and slain four antagonists,
each at the least his equal in strength, no clew could be
discovered; nor could the most diligent inquiries throw any
light upon the subsequent movements or the present residence
of the victor. Indeed from the moment of his dismissal from
the king's apartment, no one appeared to have seen or heard
aught of an individual far too remarkable both in personal appearance
and in dress to have passed unnoticed amid the idlers
of the metropolis. It was, nevertheless, certain from the demeanor
of De Coligni, and of his unsuspecting friends, that,
hitherto at least, no discovery of their meditated destruction had
occurred; and although probable that the indignant Scot, on
finding himself singled out for death by his frustrated employers,
should have revealed the whole conspiracy, it was yet
possible that the same high-minded, though mistaken spirit,
which had urged him to avenge himself on his own personal
oppressor, while neither fear nor favor could induce him to
play the hireling stabber's part, might now prevail on him to
conceal that villany, however he might abhor and shrink from
its fulfilment, which had been imparted to him beneath the seal
of private confidence.

The night drew nigh, and with the darnkess of the heavens
a heavier gloom fell on the spirit of the king; an eager, fretful
restlessness took place of his unwonted dignity — his eyes
glared from their hollow sockets with a wild expression of
misery, and the changing flush which now crimsoned his features,
now left them as sallow as the lineaments of a corpse,
gave awful tokens of a perturbed soul. Not an instant did he
remain at rest, one moment flinging himself violently on a seat,
then striding with unequal and agitated steps across the floor,
like the chafed hyena in its den. Now swearing the annihilation

of the Huguenots with fearful blasphemies, now accusing
his advisers, and even his dreaded mother herself of impious
superstition and remorseless frenzy. “It is ye,” he
said, “who have driven me to this abyss of guilt! It is ye
who reap the profits of the sin! but it is I, miserable I that
shall be blasted through endless ages by the hatred of men,
and perhaps by the wrath of God;” — and he sunk in an agony
of tears upon the couch, which rocked beneath the violence
of his convulsive anguish.

“Go to!” cried Catharine with undissembled rage — “Go to!
thou coward-boy, talk not to me of conscience and condemnation!
Thinkest thou to hide from me who have watched it
from your earliest years, the secrets of that craven heart. 'Tis
not the wrath of God — 'tis not the hatred of posterity that
thou dost fear. Say rather that thou dost tremble at the despair
of thine enemies, that thou dost shrink in terror — base
terror! — from one weak, aged, wounded mortal! — Out, out
upon thee, for a miserable dastard! Nay, rather out upon myself,
that I have borne a coward to the house of Medicis!”

“Darest thou,” shouted the boy, springing from his seat,
and confronting her with equal fury — “darest thou say this to
me?”

“All men will dare do so,” she answered scornfully. “All
men! God's-head, all women, will dare to call thee coward!
will pray to the saints, in their extremity, that they may give
birth to idiots, monsters, anything — but such as thee!”

“Mother,” he cried, gnashing his teeth with rage, and playing
with his poniard's hilt, “peace! peace! or by Him who
made me, you shall rue this hour. — Tremble!”

“Coward! poltroon! wouldst thou bare thy weapon on a
woman — and that woman, one who fears it less than thee! —
which for thy life thou durst not handle in the presence of De
Coligni. Tremble? — thinkest thou that I could tremble, if I

would; thinkest thou that I, the destined champion of the Faith
— that I, the savior of the holy Church — I, who was preordained,
before mine eyes beheld the day, to quench the light
of heresy in blood — that I, who, if thou darest to hesitate,
will take the guidance of this matter on myself, and win that
glory here, that immortality hereafter, the brilliancy of which
is more resplendent than thy dazzled eyes can bear to look
upon, thy vacillating mind to comprehend — that I know how
to tremble!”

Her vehemence prevailed! The current of his thoughts was
directed into another channel, and it was now with no small difficulty
that she prevailed on him to await the result of the executions
in the galleries of the Louvre, rather than to sheath himself
in steel, and sally forth at the head of the murderers, to prove
his valor, and to glut his newly-awakened thirst for blood! —
Yet, though she had thus confidently spoken of the glory, and
the undoubted success of the conspiracy, in her own secret
soul she shuddered! — not with fear, not with remorse, but
with devouring care, with all-engrossing agitation. Every
trivial sound that echoed through the royal corridors, every
distant peal of voices from the street, even the stealthy footstep of
the attendant-courtiers, or the sudden shutting of a door, struck
on her guilty ear with a power hardly exceeded by that of the
most appalling thunder. The glittering board was spread, the
choicest viands served in vessels of gold, the richest vintages
of Auxerre and Champaigne, flowers, and fruits, and perfumes,
all that could tempt the eye, or minister to the gratification of
the senses, were set before the royal conclave. The goblets
were filled and drained, the jest passed round, and smiles,
human smiles, illuminated the features of those, who were
plotting deeds worthy the arch-fiend himself. The boy-king
and his brother, half-maddened by the excitement of suspense,
the delirium of meditated guilt, and the fiercer stimulus of

wine, could scarce refrain from bursting into open fury; while
their craftier parent, even as she yielded to the intoxication of
the moment, never for an instant forgot the dreadful responsibility
which claimed the fullest exercise of her keen energies;
and, although she lent herself entirely to the accomplishment
of her present object — the winding up of her son's vacillating
courage to its utmost pitch — she had yet an ear for every remote
murmur, an eye for every varying expression that might
flit across the brow of page or chamberlain; an almost
superhuman readiness of mind that would have defied the most
critical emergency to find it unprovided with some apt expedient.

Stroke after stroke the heavy bells rang midnight, and it
seemed, to each of those excited minds, as though an age
elapsed between each fast-repeated clang. Another hour had
yet its course to run, before those matins, whose name shall
never be spoken without abhorrence, while the world endures,
should sound the condemnation of a people. Another hour
had yet to creep, or to career above their heads, before ten
thousand sleepers should be awakened — never to sleep again!
The flowers had lost their fragrance — the wine palled on
their deadened palates — the lights, reflected by a hundred
plates of crystal, seemed but to render darkness visible. Yet
who could calmly sit and count the minutes that were to marshall
in that morning of indiscriminate slaughter, who could
endure to listen to the monotonous ticking of that clock, the
earliest chimes of which were to be answered by the groans
of dying myriads?”

“Come!” at length exclaimed the callous mother, “it is
tedious tarrying here. It will be better in the tennis-court
than here! Thence we can mark the progress of the execution!”
— and rising from her seat, she led the way, her features
dressed in smiles, and her eyes beaming with exultation, to

the hall of exercise. Few moments had elapsed before the
clatter of the rackets, the lively bouncing of the balls, and the
loud voices of the antagonists, announced that heart and spirit
were engrossed in the excitement of the game. Oaths, shouts
of laughter, proffered bets, and notes of sportive triumph, rang
from the tongues, that, scarce an hour ago, had decided on the
doom of the unsuspecting innocents; and that, before another
should arrive, would lend their tones to swell the fearful cry
of “Kill! kill!” — “Death to the Huguenots!” — “Kill and
spare not!”

The noble gallery, which had been fitted, according to the
fashion of the day, for the game of tennis, overlooked, with its
tall netted casements, the principal street of Paris, even at that
early age a wide and beautiful parade. The cool breeze from the
river swept refreshingly around their feverish brows, but wafted
not a sound to their ears: although they well knew that the
guards must be already at their posts, crouching like tigers,
that their spring might be unerringly destructive. Tranquil,
however, as it appeared, the city glowed with almost noonday
light, for every window was illuminated with row above row
of flashing torches, and, at every angle of the streets, huge
lanterns swayed to and fro in the fresh currents of the night-wind.
It was a beautiful scene, but at the same time one
whose beauty was of a painful and unnatural cast; every
joint and moulding of the walls, nay, every crevice of the
pavements, was defined, as clearly as the outlines of a Flemish
picture; yet it seemed as if this unaccustomed splendor
had been produced by some enchantment, and to meet no mortal
end; for not a human being was to be seen throughout the
whole perspective — not a houseless dog intruded on this
strange solitude. At an earlier period of the night all had
been dark and gloomy, even before the hum of traffic, or of
pleasure, had entirely subsided; but now, when every place

was silent and deserted, unseen hands had steeped the vast
metropolis in lustre, to be witnessed by no admiring multitudes.
Long and wistfully did Catharine gaze upon that spectacle,
straining her senses, sharpened as they were by the most
fearful expectation, to catch whatever indication, sight, or
sound, might offer to the success of the conspiracy. At length,
as she listened, Charles — whose care-worn eye wandered
ever and anon from his deep gaming to his mother's countenance
— saw by the momentary shudder that thrilled her
stately form, and by the rigid tension of her features, that the
moment was at hand — and so in truth it was! Even when
that tremor quivered through her limbs, the hammer hung sus-pended
above the tocsin-bell. She had beheld no vision —
she had heard no murmur to announce the hour — yet she
knew — she felt — that, ere the breath which she was then inhaling,
should go forth, the matin peal would sound. And it
did sound! Heavily did the first clang of St. Germain's à
l'Auxerre strike on their bursting hearts, but ere its ringing
cadences had died away, another, and another, and another,
took up the signal; till at every pause between their deafening
clamor, the chimes of a hundred tocsins might be heard losing
themselves in undistinguished distance! A single shot
broke through the din of bells; with its sharp report a straggling
volley followed — a long, clear, female shriek — and then
the brutal riot of the savage soldiery, the shivering clash of
steel, groans, prayers, and execrations, were blent in one terrific
roar! If ever earthly scene might be assimilated justly
to the abode of condemned sinners, and tormenting friends,
Paris was such on that infernal morning. No! it is not profanity
to say or to believe that disembodied demons exulted in
their prison-houses, if they were not permitted to revel in the
actual contemplation of Christian men converted into worse
than pagan persecutors — of the brightest city of Christendom
presenting the appalling aspect of a universal hell!

“It is done,” cried Catharine, clapping her hands in furious
triumph — “the Lord hath arisen and his enemies are scattered!”

“I am at length a king!” exclaimed the boy, whose fears
were swallowed up in ecstacy at the accomplishment of all his
machinations — “Brave Guise! noble Cosseins! Happy the
monarch who can trust to servants, such as ye!”

Before the words had passed his lips, a louder, and a nearer,
burst of mingled cries showed that the tide of carnage set toward
the palace. Hurling his racket to the further end of the
long hall, he sprang to his mother's side, and, as he viewed the
massacre of his confiding subjects, tossed his arms aloft with
an expression of eye and lip that might have well beseemed a
Nero. First, a few scattered wretches rushed singly, or in groups,
along the lighted streets; mothers and maids — stern men with
dauntless hearts and scar-seamed brows — old grandsires with
their feeble limbs and locks of snow — and infants tottering
along in helpless terror! Then with a sound like that of the
spring-tide, the thoroughfare was choked by thousands, frantic
with despair, hurrying, they knew not whither, like sheep before
their slaughterers. Behind them flashed the bloody
sword of Guise and his relentless satellites; before, the gates
were closed; above, around, on every side, from every roof,
and every window of the illuminated dwellings, the volleyed
shot hurled them in masses to destruction.

“Quick! quick! my harquebuss!” yelled the impatient
Charles, maddened by the sight of blood, and thirsting like the
fleshed wolf for his peculiar share. “Kill! kill!” he shouted
in yet loftier tones, as the unsparing duke dashed forward,
crimsoned from spur to plume with Christian blood, animating
the fanatic Italians of the guard and aiding the work of slaughter,

with his own polluted weapon — “Kill! kill! — gallant de
Guise! — kill! and let none escape.”

Before the windows of the Louvre was a narrow court,
fenced from the street by a tall palisade of ornamented ironwork;
hither, in the first impulse of their terrors, had a herd
of wretches fled, as it were to a sanctuary in the immediate
presence of their king; and here were they confined between
the massive portals of the palace, and the noble thoroughfare
now crowded even to suffocation by an unresisting multitude,
through which the sword was slowly but implacably hewing
itself a passage. Protected by the fretted railings from their
foes without, they had vainly flattered themselves that they
were secured from immediate violence, and trusted to the proverb,
which has but too frequently been found fallacious —
that “a king's face, gives grace!” — what then must have
been their agony when they beheld that very countenance, to
which they looked for mercy, glaring along the levelled match-lock,
and felt their miserable bodies pierced by the shot at
each discharge, and by the hand of their legitimate protector.

On that tremendous night, Hamilton, like a thousand others,
was startled from sleep, in his secluded lodging, by the roar
of musketry, and by the howls of the infuriate murderers; but,
unlike the rest, be recognised at once the sequel of that relentless
policy, to which he had himself refused to minister. During
the very night, on which he had been admitted to the
royal presence, on his return homeward through the gardens
of the Louvre, he had been assaulted by the assassins, whom,
from their garb and arms he at once distinguished as the agents
of the king; by a pretended flight he had succeeded in avoid-ing
their united force, and, singly overpowering each, had
escaped uninjured to his dwelling. Conscious that he was
singled out by a power, which it would be no easy matter to
elude, and deeming that some political convulsion was at hand,

he had kept himself in total retirement, till the hue and cry
should have blown over, and till some opportunity might offer
for his effecting a retreat from France.

Springing from his couch at the first sounds of the massacre,
he perceived at a glance that all the neighboring casements
were lighted up as if for some high festival, nor could he for a
moment doubt but that to be discovered unprepared would be a
signal for his instant death. Few moments sufficed to kindle
such a blaze as would vouch for his privity to whatever plot
might be on foot, to prepare his weapons for the crisis, and to
arm himself from head to heel. Ere long the tumult thickened,
the same tragedy was enacted before his humble doors, that
was polluting even then the threshold of the royal residence.
A few shots from his window, harmlessly aimed above the
heads of the poor fugitives, procured him at once the character
of a zealous partisan; when, binding the badge of white upon
his arm — which he had remarked with his accustomed keenness
— and fixing in his burnished morion the silver cross of
his loved country, he descended, resolutely plunging through
the abhorred carnage, in the hope of extricating himself, amid
the general havoc, from the guilty city.

Though by no means elevated in all his thoughts above the
prejudices of the age, and though himself a zealous adherent
of the Romish church, his noble soul revolted from a scene so
barbarous, and, as he saw at once, so horribly gratuitous. Had
the destruction been confined to the leaders of the Huguenot
party, nay, even to the whole of its armed supporters, it is
possible that his ideas might not have soared beyond the spirit
of his times; but when he saw children unable yet to lisp
their earliest words, girls in the flush of virgin Ioveliness, and
youthful mothers with their infants at their bosom, hewn down
and trampled to the earth, he shrank with inward loathing from
such promiscuous slaughter, and hardly could he refrain from

starting to the rescue. Nurtured, however, as he had been, in
a rude and iron country, educated in a school of warfare, inured,
from his youth upward, to sights of blood, and, above all
things, tutored by sad experience, in that most arduous lesson,
to keep the feelings ever in subjection to the reason, he had
less difficulty in resisting his desire to strike a blow in behalf
of helpless innocence, than we, at this enlightened period, can
imagine; and thus, occasionally lending his deep voice to
swell the clamor which he hated, he strode along amid the
host of persecutors, collecting, as best he might, from, the disjointed
exclamations of the mob, such information as might
serve to extricate him from the wide charnel-house of Paris.
Armed, from head to heel, in complete panoply, his unusual
proportions, and lofty port, joined to the stern authority which
sat upon his brow, caused him to be regarded in the light of a
chieftain, among the Romish partisans. It was not, therefore,
long before he ascertained that two of the city-gates had purposely
been left unbarred, though circled by a chosen band of
Switzers, and Italian mercenaries; and if he could succeed in
making his way unscathed to either of these, he doubted not
but he should be able to pass, by means of his assumed importance;
and, once at large, he was resolved to make no pause
until he should have crossed the sea. One difficulty alone
presented itself — it would be necessary that he should traverse
the esplanade before the windows of the Louvre, and beneath
the very eyes of the perfidious Charles; who, if he should
recognise the person of the haughty Scot, would, beyond a
doubt, avenge the slight which had been offered to his royal
will. Still it was his sole chance of escape; and, when life
is at stake, there is no probability, however slender, to which
men will not cling in their extremity.

Boldly, but at the same time cautiously, did Hamilton proceed,
stifling his indignation at a thousand sights, which made

his heart's blood curdle, with necessary resolution, nor daring
to extend an arm to protect the miserable beings who clung
around his knees, wrestling with their cold-blooded murderers,
and shrieking, in their great agony, for `Life! life! for the
love of God!” Once, as with ill-dissembled fury, he headed
a band of more than common ferocity, a lovely female — her
slender garments torn from her limbs by the rude soldiery, her
long, fair tresses dabbled in the blood which gushed from
twenty wounds — thrust her helpless babe into his arms, beseeching
him with anguish, such as none but mothers feel —
“If he had ever loved a woman, to save her little one!” Even
as she spoke, a dark-browed Spaniard struck his stiletto into
her bosom, and she fell, still shrieking as she lay beneath the
trampling feet — “Save! for God's love! save my wretched
child!” The monster who had felled the parent, drove the
bloody weapon into the throat of the infant, and whirling the
little corpse around his head, shouted the accursed war-cry —
“Death! death! to the Huguenots!” It was fortunate for
the noble Scott, that as he turned, the hot blood boiling to his
brow with rage, to avenge the crime, an ill-directed shot from
a neighboring easement, took place in the Spaniard's forehead,
and, with a mingled yell of agony and triumph, he plunged
headlong forward upon the bodies of his victims, a dead man,
ere he touched the pavement. His whole soul sickening at
the fiendish outrage, Hamilton could barely nerve himself to
go another step, in such companionship; but, although he did
not move a limb, the pressure of the concourse bore him onward,
till almost unconsciously he found himself a witness to
the scenes enacted in the court-yard of the palace.

The area of the promenade had, by this time, been cleared
of living occupants through means too surely indicated by the
piles of gory carcasses heaped up on every side. The men,
tired of unresisting butchery, leaned listlessly on their tall

lances, unless some keener stimulus urged them to fresh exertions;
they had become epicures, as it were, in cruelty, and
rarely moved from their positions, unless to commit some
deed of blacker and more damnable atrocity. The king still
kept his station, at the window of the tennis-court, and ever
and anon, the bright flash of his harquebuss announced that he
still found gratification in wanton bloodshed.

The unfortunate wretches who had rushed into the toils,
while seeking for a refuge; had, for the most part, fallen victims
to his deadly aim; but a few, smarting with unnumbered
wounds, and rendered sullen by despair, crouched in a corner
of the small enclosure, seemingly unwilling to meet their fate,
otherwise than in company; till, pricked and goaded up by
the pike of the condottieri, they were compelled to run the
gauntlet, foaming at the mouth, like over-driven oxen, and
staggering like men in the last stage of drunkenness. The
red spot glowed upon the front of Bothwelhaugh, as he beheld
the savage pastime; for many hours his choler had been accumulating,
and it was now fast verging to the point, at which
it must find vent, or suffocate him. He saw a fair child borne
in the arms of a brawny butcher of the suburbs, smiling up
into the face and twining its tiny fingers among the clotted
mustaches of its unmoved tormentor; — he saw it torn from
its hold, impaled upon a lance, and held aloft, a target for the
monarch's practice. He saw De Guise, the arch-mover of the
mischief, descend from his charger, and coolly wipe the visage
of the slaughtered Coligni, with his own kerchief, to ascertain
the identity of the lifeless clay. He saw a band of
little children, dragging an infant Huguenot along, laughing
and crowing at its youthful executioners, to plunge the cradled
babe in the dark eddies of the Seine. He felt that he could
endure this no longer — he felt that he must proclaim his
hatred and abhorrence, or expire in the effort of repressing

them; and all that he now desired, was an opportunity of dying
with eclat, and of involving in his own destruction the
author of so many horrors. At the very moment when these
fiery thoughts were working in his brain, an object met his
eye, which, by recalling associations of a time and place far
distant, roused him at once to open fury. A mother bearing
her lifeless child along, hopelessly and irretrievably frantic!
Regardless of the wound which had been inflicted on her tender
frame — fearless of the pursuers, who hunted her with
brandished blades — she dandled the clay-cold body in the air,
or hushed it in her bleeding bosom, humming wild fragments,
which her memory yet retained, from melodies of happier
days. At once the snow-storm on the banks of Esk, his own
beloved bride, frenzied and perishing beside the first-born
pledge of her affections, rushed instantaneously upon his mind.
“Accursed butchers, hold!” he shouted in a voice of thunder,
and, ere they could obey his bidding, the foremost fell, precipitated
by the swiftness of his previous motion, ten feet in front
of his intended victim; — and a second, and a third staggered
away from his tremendous blows mortally wounded, while the
rest — struck with astonishment at seeing one, whom they, till
now, had followed as a champion in their cause, stand forth in
the defence of a proscribed heretic — faltered, and skulked aside
like rated hounds.

Ere he had time to reflect on the consequences of his rashness,
a well-remembered voice thrilled in his ear, “ 'Tis he!”
No more was spoken; but in that brief sentence, he had heard
and recognised his doom. Turning toward the palace-front,
he marked the form of Catharine, leaning from the window;
and pointing, in all the eagerness of hatred, her extended arm
to his own person; behind her, he could just distinguish the
sallow features of the king, reaching his hand to grasp the
matchlock, which a courtier loaded at his elbow. “I shall

die!” muttered the undaunted Scot, “but unavenged, never!”
A petronel was in his hand — the muzzle bore fully on the
majestic figure of the queen, his finger pressed the trigger —
he paused, stood like a statue carved in marble, his weapon
still directed to the mark, and that falcon glance, which never
yet had missed its aim, fixed steadfastly upon its object! He
saw the carabine of the tyrant rise slowly to its level, yet he
fired not! The person of Charles was screened by the intervention
of his mother's breast. “Devil!” he shouted —
“devil that thou art — exult in thine impunity! No Hamilton
hath ever harmed a woman!” The carabine was discharged,
but no motion of the Scot showed what had been the event!
The brow was still serene, the arm extended, and the eyeball
calm as ever! The hand rose higher, till the pistol pointed
perpendicularly upward — the report rang clearly into the air
— and ere the echoes passed away, the gallant, but misguided
soldier lay a corpse upon the bloody pavement — cut off himself,
as he had slain the oppressor, by the bullet of a concealed
assassin. Such are the ways of Providence.