The Count of St. Paul turned to obey, but paused for a moment before he had reached the door. The Duke of Guise by this time was gazing fixedly upon the hilt of his sword, as it lay on the table before him, and seemed perfectly unconscious that the Count had not quitted the room. A slight smile curled that gentleman's lip, as he saw the direction that the Duke's eyes had taken, and he opened the door and passed out. For several minutes the Duke of Guise continued to gaze in deep thought; and his bosom at that moment was certainly full of those sensations which never, perhaps, occur to any man but once in his lifetime--even if Fate have cast him one of those rare and memorable lots, which bear down the winner thereof, upon the stream of fame and memory, through a thousand ages after his own day is done. The fate of his country was in his hands; he had but to stretch out his arm and grasp the crown of France: and what temptations were there to do so to a mind like his! It must not be forgotten that the Duke of Guise, by every hereditary feeling, by every prejudice of education, as well as by many strong and peculiar points in his own character, was in truth and reality a strenuous and zealous supporter of the Roman Catholic Church. His veneration for that great and extraordinary institution had descended to him from his father, and had formed the great principle of action in his own life. Even had he merely assumed that devotion for the church during so many years, the very habit must have moulded his feelings into the same form; and he must have been by this time, more or less a zealous advocate of the Catholic cause, even if he had set out with caring nothing in reality about it. But such was not the case: his father had educated him in principles of strict and stern devotion to the faith in which they were born; and though in the gaieties and the frivolities of youth, or the eager struggles of manhood, he might have appeared in the ordinary affairs of life any thing on earth but the zealot, yet still his zeal would have been far more than a pretence, had it only been the effect of early education and constant habit. There was something still more, however, to be said. The spirit of the Catholic Church was consonant to, and harmonious with, the whole tone of his own feelings, at once deep, powerful, imaginative, enthusiastic, politic, and commanding. Chivalry, feudalism, and the Church of Rome, went hand in hand: all three were, indeed, in their decay; but if ever man belonged to the epoch of chivalry, it was Henry Duke of Guise; and he clung to all the other institutions that were attached to that past epoch, of which he in spirit was a part.