None were left in the royal apartment but the four personages whose dreary waiting had been enlivened and their apprehension distracted for a moment by this singular comedy. It was a chivalrous scene, peculiar to the politics of the sixteenth century. CHAPTER XXVIII THE TUMULT OF AMBOISE After the departure of the Prince de Condé, neither the king nor Mary Stuart nor the brothers De Lorraine referred to what had just taken place. They seemed to avoid the dangerous subject by tacit understanding. Minutes and hours passed away in the gloomy and restless silence of expectation. François II. often passed his hand across his burning brow; while Mary, seated apart, gazed sorrowfully at the pale, thin face of her young spouse, and furtively brushed away a tear from time to time. The Cardinal de Lorraine was wholly intent upon the sounds to be heard without; while Le Balafré, whose dispositions were all made, and whose rank, as well as his office, obliged him to stay by the king's side, seemed to chafe bitterly at his forced inaction, and every now and then quivered with impatience and stamped upon the floor, as a fiery war-horse chafes at the rein which restrains him. However, the night drew to a close; the bell of the château, followed by that on St. Florentin, struck six, then half after six. The day began to break; and there had been no sign of an assault, no alarm given by the sentinels. "Well," said the king, with a sigh of relief, "I begin to believe, Monsieur le Cardinal, that Lignières has misled your Eminence, or else that the Huguenots have changed their minds." "So much the worse if they have," replied Charles de Lorraine, "for we are sure to put down the rebellion." "Oh, no! so much the better!" exclaimed François; "for the contest of itself would be a humiliation for royalty--" But his sentence was yet unfinished when two shots of an arquebuse, the signal which had been agreed upon as an alarm, were fired, and the shout was heard, repeated from post to post along the ramparts,-- "To arms! to arms! to arms!" "There can be no doubt that the enemy are upon us!" cried the cardinal, turning pale in spite of himself. The Duc de Guise rose, apparently well content, and said simply as he saluted the king, "Sire, I shall soon be with you again," and went hurriedly from the room. His powerful voice could be plainly heard, giving orders in the antechamber, when there was a second volley of arquebuses. "You see, Sire," said the cardinal, perhaps to put his fear to shame with the sound of his voice,--"you see that Lignières was well informed, and only made an error of a few hours." But the king heard him not; angrily biting his colorless lips, he had ears only for the ever-growing noise of artillery and arquebuses. "Even yet I can hardly believe in the possibility of such audacity!" he muttered. "Such an outrage upon the crown--" "Can only result in shame and abasement for the wretches, Sire," rejoined the cardinal.