"But about this point of death are centred many confused and jarring lines in an inextricable web; and bright as they look to vulgar eyes, yon stars in the heavens shine with a lurid light to those who know to look upon them with the eyes of science; and upon their path is a dim trail of blood--troubled and harassed shall be _the last hours of this reign_." "But what shall be the issue, Ruggieri?" said the Queen eagerly. "Since Charles must die, I must resign myself to the will of destiny," she added, with an air of pious humility; and then, as if throwing aside a mask which she thought needless before the astrologer, she continued with a bitterness which amounted almost to passion in one externally so cold--"Since Charles must die, he can be spared. He has thrown off my maternal authority; and with the obstinacy of suspicion, he has thwarted all my efforts to resume that power which he has wrested from me, and which his weak hands wield so ill. He has been taught to look upon me with mistrust; in vain I have combated this influence, and if it grow upon him, mistrust will ripen into hate. He regrets that great master-stroke of policy, which, by destroying all those cursed Huguenots, delivered us at one blow from our most deadly enemies. He has spoken of it with horror. He has dared to blame me. He has taken Henry of Navarre, the recusant Huguenot, the false wavering Catholic, to his counsels lately. He is my son no longer, since he no longer acknowledges his mother's will: and he can be spared! But when he is gone, what shall be the issue, Ruggieri? how stand the other horoscopes?" "The stars of the two Henrys rise together in the heavens" replied the Queen's astrologer and confidant. "Before them stands a house of double glory, which promises a double crown; but the order of the heavens is not such that I can read as yet, which of the two shall first enter it, or enter it alone."