"No, no!" he replied, stamping his foot on the ground. "It is against Monsieur de Montgommery and no other that I propose to run this course, and there has been enough delay! Give me my armor." He met the count's fixed, stern gaze with a proud and haughty glance, and without more words he put his head forward that Monsieur de Vieilleville might adjust his casque. Clearly his destiny had blinded him. Monsieur de Savoie came to renew Catherine de Médicis's entreaties that the king would leave the field. As Henri did not trouble himself to reply to these urgent representations, the duke added in a low tone,-- "Madame Diane de Poitiers, Sire, also asked me to warn you secretly to be on your guard against him with whom you are to dispute this bout." At Diane's name, Henri started in spite of himself, but again he repressed his emotion. "Shall I show myself a craven, then, before my beloved?" he asked himself. And he maintained the dignified silence of one who is importuned to depart from an unalterable resolution. Meanwhile, Monsieur de Vieilleville, while adjusting his armor, took occasion to say to him beneath his breath,-- "Sire, I swear by the living God that for three nights I have dreamed of nothing but that some mishap would befall you to-day, and that this last day of June would be a fatal one for you."[4] But the king did not appear to have heard him; he was already armed, and he seized his lance. Gabriel was handed his, and also entered the lists. The two combatants mounted their horses and took the field. A deep, awful silence pervaded the entire assemblage; all eyes were so intent upon the spectacle before them that breathing seemed almost to be suspended. However, the constable and Diane de Castro being absent, every one in that vast throng, except Madame de Poitiers, was in ignorance of the fact that there were between the king and the Comte de Montgommery any causes of enmity or any wrongs to be avenged. No one clearly foreboded a bloody issue to a mock combat. The king, accustomed to these sports unattended with danger, had shown himself in the arena a hundred times within three days, under conditions which apparently differed in no respect from those existing at this moment. And yet there was a vague sensation of something awe-inspiring and out of the common course in this adversary who had remained shrouded in mystery until the very end, in his significant reluctance to enter the lists,--likewise in the king's stubborn obstinacy; and in the face of this unknown danger, every one waited in breathless silence. Why? No one could have told. But a stranger arriving at that moment, and observing the expression on every face, would have said,-- "Some critical event is about to take place." There was terror in the very air. One extraordinary circumstance demonstrated clearly the sinister complexion of the thoughts of the throng.