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FRANCE, IN OLD TIMES.
85
place, amid death in its most dreadful forms, his attention was arrested by a boy about his own age, whose placid countenance and unmoved deportment strongly contrasted with the surrounding horrors. Two soldiers apparently had him in charge, shouting "to mass! to mass!" while, he neither in compliance or opposition, calmly continued his course, until they found some more conspicuous object of barbarity, and released him from their grasp. This proved to be Maximilian Bethune, afterwards the great Duke of Sully, prime minister of Henry IVth, who by a wonderful mixture of prudence and firmness, preserved a life, which was to be of such value to the realm. He was at this time, making
