triumphantly Louis de France and Gaston d'Orléans! Draw the sword of rebellion if it be too restless to remain in the scabbard; you will not find me shrink from the flash of steel; and should you take the field I will be there to meet you. Rally your chiefs; the array can have no terrors for me, prepared as I am to confront you with some of the best and the bravest in all France. Deny this if you can, you who seek to undermine the throne, and to sacrifice the nation to your own ambitious egotism, and I will confound you with the names of Guise, Montmorency, Brissac, Sully, Bassompierre, Lesdiguières, Marillac, and Ornano; these, and many more of the great captains of the age, will peal out my war-cry, and rally round the threatened throne of their legitimate sovereign. My son will be in the midst of them; and mark me well, gentlemen, the struggle shall no sooner have commenced than every pampered adventurer who has poisoned the ear of the monarch, and steeled his heart against his mother, shall be crushed under her heel; and should he dare to raise his head, I will assign to him as his armour-bearer the executioner of Paris." Never before had the Regent evinced such an amount of energy; never before had she so laid bare the secret workings of her soul. The adherents of the Princes trembled as they discovered with how formidable an enemy they should be called thenceforward to contend; while the majority of the nobles who were faithful to the royal cause, and above all those whose names she had so proudly quoted, uttered loud acclamations of delight and triumph. Bewildered by the daring of his mother, Louis once more sought for support from his favourite, but De Luynes was in no position to afford it. The allusion to himself with which Marie de Medicis had concluded her harangue was too palpable to be mistaken, and he felt that should she maintain her purpose he was lost. Even Richelieu, as if crushed beneath the impassioned eloquence of the Regent, sat with drooping head and downcast eyes; and meanwhile Marie herself, after having glanced defiantly over the assembly, calmly resumed her seat, and desired that the business of the meeting might proceed. Before the sitting closed it was determined that the army should be placed upon the war footing, and that a levy of six thousand Swiss should immediately be made; and this arrangement completed, the Queen-mother proceeded to attempt by every means in her power a reconciliation with the Guises.