The little incident may have touched her, arousing her conscience. For that night she disturbed his slumbers by sudden screams, and when he sprang up in solicitous alarm she falteringly told him of a dream in which she had seen him slain, and fell to imploring him with a tenderness such as had been utterly foreign to her of late to take great care of himself in the days to come. In the morning she renewed those entreaties, beseeching him not to leave the Louvre that day, urging that she had a premonition it would be fatal to him. He laughed for answer. “You have heard of the predictions of La Brosse,” said he. “Bah! You should not attach credit to such nonsense.” Anon came the Duke of Vendome, his natural son by the Marquise de Verneuil, with a like warning and a like entreaty, only to receive a like answer. Being dull and indisposed as a consequence of last night’s broken rest, Henry lay down after dinner. But finding sleep denied him, he rose, pensive and gloomy, and wandered aimlessly down, and out into the courtyard. There an exempt of the guard, of whom he casually asked the time, observing the King’s pallor and listlessness, took the liberty of suggesting that his Majesty might benefit if he took the air. That chance remark decided Henry’s fate. His eyes quickened responsively. “You advise well,” said he. “Order my coach. I will go to the Arsenal to see the Duc de Sully, who is indisposed.” On the stones beyond the gates, where lackeys were wont to await their masters, sat a lean fellow of some thirty years of age, in a dingy, clerkly attire, so repulsively evil of countenance that he had once been arrested on no better grounds than because it was deemed impossible that a man with such a face could be other than a villain. Whilst the coach was being got ready, Henry re-entered the Louvre, and startled the Queen by announcing his intention. With fearful insistence she besought him to countermand the order, and not to leave the palace. “I will but go there and back,” he said, laughing at her fears. “I shall have returned before you realize that I have gone.” And so he went, never to return alive. He sat at the back of the coach, and the weather being fine all the curtains were drawn up so that he might view the decorations of the city against the Queen’s public entry on Sunday. The Duc d’Epernon was on his right, the Duc de Montbazon and the Marquis de la Force on his left. Lavordin and Roquelaure were in the right boot, whilst near the left boot, opposite to Henry, sat Mirebeau and du Plessis Liancourt. He was attended only by a small number of gentlemen on horseback, and some footmen.