A Gentleman from Gascony: A Romance of the Huguenots — page 103: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ASSASSINATION OF COLIGNY. 99 which he had in his hand, and then struck him on the head with it. Raoul uttered a cry of impotent rage, and struggled without avail to free himself. | Coligny fell, murmuring: “If it were butaman! But ’tis a horse-boy!” Others of the miscreants then advanced and struck him in their turn. , “Hola, Behm,” cried a voice from without, and, pushing through the crowd, appeared a young man, clothed in the richest of velvet, with a jewelled collar about his neck and falling low over his breast. “"Tis done, Monseigneur,” replied the German, with the greatest sang-froid, pointing to the body pros- trate at his feet. “Ma foi, ’tis indeed the admiral!” ejaculated Guise, approaching, and viewing the helpless figure with silent ecstasy. “Ah!” he continued, planting his foot upon the breast of the Protestant hero. “At last, Coligny! Murderer of my father, thus do I avenge him!” But so tenacious of life was the unhappy man, that, though stabbed and hacked in a dozen places, he opened his eyes, clinched his mutilated hand, and, in a hollow voice, with his fast-glazing eyes fixed upon the duke, panted forth: ‘Henri de Guise, I did not kill your father. One day the foot of the assassin shail be planted upon your breast! My curse upon you!” Pale as death, the duke started back, and an invol- untary shudder passed over him. It seemed to him that the veil of the future had suddenly been rent in twain. But not so with Behm. No qualms assaulted his guilt-hardened conscience. Gomichboo S (SO)