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Updated: May 6, 2025
"It cannot be that; if they had desired your death, they would have hired assassins to waylay you." Yet I knew that he was right. The strange request that Mlle. d'Arency had made of me in the church was now explained. A kind of smile appeared, for a moment, on De Noyard's face, struggling with his expression of weakness and pain.
"That of M. de Noyard's servant, to whom I acknowledged that I had killed his master. Other evidence may come up. What I have come to beg is your intercession with the King " "I understand," he said, without much interest. "I shall bring up the matter before the King leaves his bed." "When may I expect to know?" I asked, not knowing whether to be reassured or alarmed at his indifference.
Then I remembered what De Rilly had told me, that De Noyard's counsels to the Duke of Guise were an obstacle to Catherine's design of conciliating that powerful leader, who aspired to the throne on which her son was seated. "No, no, monsieur!" I cried, unwilling to admit Mlle. d'Arency capable of such a trick, or myself capable of being so duped.
Mlle. d'Arency had trusted to my youth, agility, and supposed skill to give me the victory in that fight in the dark; and then to circumstances to disclose who had done the deed. "It was De Noyard's jealous rival," everybody would say. Having found a sufficient motive, no one would take the trouble to seek the real source, to trace the affair to the instigation of Catherine de Medici.
I went, in my excitement, first to the wrong corner. Then, discovering my blunder, I retraced my steps, and at last secured admittance to the place where De Noyard's valets tarried. To the man who opened the door, I said, "Are you Jacques, the serving-man of Monsieur de Noyard?"
"M. de Quelus," I said, "last night, in a sudden quarrel which arose out of a mistake, I was so unfortunate as to kill M. de Noyard. It was neither a duel nor a murder, each of us seemed justified in attacking the other." De Quelus did not seem displeased to hear of De Noyard's death. "What evidence is there against you?" he asked.
It was not certain that the King, himself, had been privy to his mother's design of causing De Noyard's death. In such matters she often acted without consulting him. Therefore, when De Quelus should present my case to him as merely that of a duel over a love affair, Henri would perhaps give me his assurances of safety, at once, and would hold himself bound in honor to stand by them.
I recalled, also, that you had the esteem of my brother's faithful Bussy d'Amboise. My mother immediately expressed the greatest horror at De Noyard's death, with the greatest sympathy for M. de Guise; and she urged the King to make an example of you."
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