We have been reading again Dumas's thrilling description of the "tumult of Amboise," and his pathetic picture of the young King and Queen, who shrank from witnessing the tortures and death to which their Huguenot subjects were condemned. Catherine insisted that they should take their places on the balcony overlooking the court of execution, chid her son as a weakling because he shrank from the sight of blood, while the Cardinal reminded poor, trembling, tender-hearted Francis that his "grandsire of glorious memory, Francis I, had always assisted at the burning of heretics." "Other kings do as they please and so will I," Francis had the courage to say but not to do, as he and Mary, "poor crowned slaves," as the novelist calls them, were forced to appear upon the iron balcony and witness the execution of some of the noblest of their subjects. Standing on the Tour des Minimes on this fair September day, looking down upon the balconies, terraces, and gardens of the chateau basking in warm sunshine, it was difficult to realize the scenes of horror and bloodshed that were enacted here on that sad day in March, 1560. The Duke had his troops ambushed in the forest of Chateau Regnault, in readiness to attack the conspirators as they approached in small detachments, and over the peaceful plain spread before us, through which the Loire winds its way, an army of Frenchmen was lured on to its destruction by false promises of safety, and in yonder forest of Chateau Regnault one of the prime movers in the uprising, the Seigneur de la Renaudie, a gentleman of Perigord, was overtaken and slain. Such other brave men and noble gentlemen as the Baron de Castelnau Chalosse and the Baron de Raunay were spared for a sadder fate, while for the Prince of Conde there was reserved the crowning horror of seeing his followers beheaded one by one. It is said that as they were led into the courtyard they turned to salute their "_chef muet_," a salute which he was brave enough to return, while they went to the block singing Clement Marot's adaptation of the Sixty-seventh Psalm: Dieu nous soit doux et favorable Nous benissant par sa bonte Et de son visage adorable Nous fasse luire la clarte. It is not strange that, in the face of such sublime faith and dauntless courage, the young Queen should have pleaded for the life of these noblemen, or that the Duke de Nemours, who had pledged his faith as a prince, "on his honor and on the damnation of his soul," that the Huguenot deputies should be fairly dealt with, should have added his entreaties to those of Mary.