Five weeks passed before he
could rejoin his colonists, who, despairing of his safety, were about to
choose a new chief.
Meanwhile, young Biencourt, speeding on his way, heard dire news from a
fisherman on the Grand Bank. The knife of Ravaillac had done its work.
Henry the Fourth was dead.
There is an ancient street in Paris, where a great thoroughfare
contracts to a narrow pass, the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Tall buildings
overshadow it, packed from pavement to tiles with human life, and from
the dingy front of one of them the sculptured head of a man looks down
on the throng that ceaselessly defiles beneath. On the fourteenth of
May, 1610, a ponderous coach, studded with fleurs-de-lis and rich with
gilding, rolled along this street. In it was a small man, well advanced
in life, whose profile once seen could not be forgotten,--a hooked
nose, a protruding chin, a brow full of wrinkles, grizzled hair, a
short, grizzled beard, and stiff, gray moustaches, bristling like a
cat's. One would have thought him some whiskered satyr, grim from the
rack of tumultuous years; but his alert, upright port bespoke unshaken
vigor, and his clear eye was full of buoyant life. Following on the
footway strode a tall, strong, and somewhat corpulent man, with
sinister, deep-set eyes and a red beard, his arm and shoulder covered
with his cloak.
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