about
the hour of eleven
While Rochefoucauld , with Nancay at his side and his gentlemen attending him , passed along the echoing and now empty gallery , the younger man bounded down the stairs to the great hall of the Caryatides , his face radiant . He for one was not sleepy . We have it on record that before the Comte de la Rochefoucauld left the Louvre that night he received the strongest hints of the peril which threatened him ; and at least one written warning was handed to him by a stranger in black , and by him in turn was communicated to the King of Navarre . We are told further that when he took his final leave , about the hour of eleven , he found the courtyard brilliantly lighted , and the three companies of guards -- Swiss , Scotch , and French -- drawn up in ranked array from the door of the great hall to the gate which opened on the street . But , the chronicler adds , neither this precaution , sinister as it appeared to some of his suite , nor the grave farewell which Rambouillet , from his post at the gate , took of one of his gentlemen , shook that chivalrous soul or sapped its generous confidence . M. de Tignonville was young and less versed in danger than the Governor of Rochelle ; with him , had he seen so much , it might have been different . But he left the Louvre an hour earlier -- at a time when the precincts of the palace , gloomy-seeming to us in the light cast by coming events , wore their wonted aspect .