It was useless to devise some excuse for not obeying the summons—invitation, or what it might be—for that was only to bring the queen herself to the rue des Tournelles; and so to the Palais Royal Ninon went, to find Christina stretched upon a miserable pallet-bed, with an evil-smelling, just-extinguished candle on the table beside her. A serviette did duty for a night-cap, tied round her head, which was denuded of every hair; for she had had it shaved close on the previous night. Christina presented a strangely grotesque and wretchedly miserable picture. Seizing Ninon by both hands, she told her that she was suffering the deepest agony of mind—a grief that was horrible—and begged her to stay by her. At this moment, Sentinelli entered, and a whispered conversation ensued. “Oh, they will prevent me?” she cried then. “They will prevent me, will they? Let them dare. Am I not a queen? Have I not a right to high justice? Very well, then,” she went on, when again Sentinelli had bent to whisper again. “We must dissimulate. I will go back to Fontainebleau. There at least, I can do as I please,” and she prevailed on Ninon to accompany her. And there in the Galérie des Cerfs at Fontainebleau the hideous tragedy was enacted. The farce of this woman’s daily life fades out in the thought of her ferocity and revengeful instincts. Monaldeschi had offended her: he had done worse, he had been treacherous towards her. Pitiless, with eyes glittering with rage and hatred, she stood in the Galérie, where the fading daylight was illumined by the flare of the torches held by her pages, and taxed the wretched culprit—pleading for mercy at her feet—with his crimes; but it was not accorded; “Ah, let me live!” he entreated—“let me live!” And Ninon, who had dreaded something, but was utterly unprepared for such a frightful scene, joined her entreaties to his and to those of his confessor, the monk Lebel. “Ah, no! A woman,” she sobbed, “cannot give an order for this man to die.” “I am not a woman,” replied Christina; “I am a queen, and I have the right to punish a traitor.” She gave the signal. There was a fearful struggle, the flash of Sentinelli’s sword, an agonised cry, a crimson stream upon the floor—and then the silence of death. It had been with extreme reluctance that Ninon had accompanied the queen to Fontainebleau; but for all Christina’s enigmatical and elaborate preparations before starting, any conception of her murderous intentions did not occur to Ninon. She had grown accustomed to the royal lady’s freaks and eccentricities. On this occasion, Christina had sent for a confessor, and having attired herself from head to foot in black, she knelt before him when he arrived, and first desiring Ninon not to leave the apartment, but to seat herself in a distant corner of it, she muttered out to the perplexed-looking Bishop of Amiens—whom she had sent for, he staying at that time at the Tuileries, spending a kind of brief retreat—what she had to say.