those old-fashioned double-seated chairs which are now so seldom seen, even as objects of antiquarian research; and, from one of the two places which it afforded, an attendant of the sick rose up as Henry entered, and glided away into the ante-room. St. Real paused and closed the door between the two chambers; and Henry, advancing, took the vacant seat, and kindly laid his hand upon that of his sick friend. "Why how now, lord Marquis?" he said, in a feeling but cheerful tone; "how now? this is not the state in which I hoped to find you. But, faith, I must have you better soon, for I would fain see you once more at the head of your followers." The Marquis of St. Real shook his head, with a look which had neither melancholy nor fear in its expression, but which plainly conveyed his conviction that he was never destined to lead followers to the field again, or rise from the bed on which he was then stretched. Nor, indeed, although the young monarch spoke cheerful hopes--did he entertain any expectations equal to his words. The Marquis of St. Real was more than eighty years of age; and though his frame had been one of great power, and in his eyes there was still beaming the light of a fine heart and active mind, yet time had bowed him long before, and many a past labour and former hardship in the Italian wars had broken the staff of his strength, and left him to fall before the first stroke of illness. Sickness had come at length, and now all the powers of life were evidently failing fast. The features of his face had grown thin and sharp; his temples seemed to have fallen in; and over his whole countenance--which in his green old age had been covered with the ruddy hue of health--was now spreading fast the grey ashy colour of the grave. "Your Majesty is welcome!" he said, in a low, faint voice, which obliged Henry to bend his head in order to catch the sounds; "but I must not hope, either for your Majesty or any one else, to set lance in the rest again. I doubt not," he continued, after a momentary pause--"I doubt not that you have thought me somewhat cold-hearted and ungrateful, after many favours received at your hands, and at those of your late noble mother, that I have not long before this espoused the cause of those whom I think unjustly persecuted. But I trust that you have not come to reproach me with what I have not done, but rather to show me now how I can serve you in my dying hour; without, however, even then forgetting the allegiance I owe to the crown of France, and my duty to her monarch." "To reproach you I certainly have not come, my noble friend," answered Henry; "for I have ever respected your scruples, though I may have thought them unfounded. Nevertheless, what I have now to tell you will put those scruples to an end at once and for ever. The cause of Henry of Navarre and of Henry III. of France are now about to be united. My good brother-in-law, the King, has written to me for aid----"