"Thanks be to God!--a man-child hath come into the world, and cried not," said the old man. He took the infant in his arms, and, after the ancient fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of garlic, and poured into its mouth, from a golden cup, a few drops of Jurancon wine. And so was born Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow of these tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom a vision of the grandly eventful life which followed. An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a lady leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the Condé head the group of generals who, bonnet in hand, surround the lady and the child; and then Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice, dedicates the little Henri to the Protestant cause in France; and with loud acclamations is the gift received, and the leader accepted by the stern Huguenot array.--The next picture. An antique room in the Louvre. The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots ring through the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute, stands Henri, beside a young man richly, but negligently, dressed, who, after speaking wildly and passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus--stands for a moment as though about to level it at his unshrinking companion, and then exclaiming like a maniac, "_Il faut que je tue quelq'un_," flings open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and Charles IX. on the night of the St. Bartholemew.--Another vision. A battle-field: Henri surrounded by his eager troops--the famous white plume of Ivry rising above his helmet: "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray; Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre."