"It is no great merit in me to love such a perfect Queen," said the young King. "I do not know what hindered me from embracing you before the whole Court last night, when you danced the branle with tapers. I could see how all the women looked serving-wenches by you, my sweet Marie!"
"For plain prose your language is charming, my dear heart: it is love that speaks, to be sure. And, you know, my dear, that if you were but a poor little page, I should still love you just as much as I now do, and yet it is a good thing to be able to say, 'My sweetheart is a King!'"
"Such a pretty arm! Why must we get dressed? I like to push my fingers through your soft hair and tangle your golden curls. Listen, pretty one; I will not allow you to let your women kiss your fair neck and your pretty shoulders any more! I am jealous of the Scotch mists for having touched them."
"Will you not come to see my beloved country? The Scotch would love you, and there would be no rebellions, as there are here."
"Who rebels in our kingdom?" said François de Valois, wrapping himself in his gown, and drawing his wife on to his knee.
"Yes, this is very pretty play," said she, withdrawing her cheek from his kiss. "But you have to reign, if you please, my liege."
"Who talks of reigning?—This morning I want to——"
"Need you say 'I want to,' when you can do what you will?—That is the language of neither king nor lover. However, that is not the matter on hand—we have important business to attend to."
"Oh!" said the King, "it is a long time since we have had any business to do.—Is it amusing?"
"Not at all," said Mary; "we must make a move."
"I will wager, my pretty one, that you have seen one of your uncles, who manage matters so well that, at seventeen, I am a King only in name. I really know not why, since the first Council, I have ever sat at one; they could do everything quite as well by setting a crown on my chair; I see everything through their eyes, and settle matters blindfold."
"Indeed, monsieur," said the Queen, standing up and assuming an air of annoyance, "you had agreed never again to give me the smallest trouble on that score, but to leave my uncles to exercise your royal power for the happiness of your people. A nice people they are! Why, if you tried to govern them unaided, they would swallow you whole like a strawberry. They need warriors to rule them—a stern master gloved with iron; while you—you are a charmer whom I love just as you are, and should not love if you were different—do you hear, my lord?" she added, bending down to kiss the boy, who seemed inclined to rebel against this speech, but who was mollified by the caress.
"Oh, if only they were not your uncles!" cried Francis. "I cannot endure that Cardinal; and when he puts on his insinuating air and his submissive ways, and says to me with a bow, 'Sire, the honor of the Crown and the faith of your fathers is at stake, your Majesty will never allow——' and this and that—I am certain he toils for nothing but his cursed House of Lorraine."
"How well you mimic him!" cried the Queen. "But why do you not make these Guises inform you of what is going forward, so as to govern by and by on your own account when you are of full age? I am your wife, and your honor is mine. We will reign, sweetheart—never fear! But all will not be roses for us till we are free to please ourselves. There is nothing so hard for a King as to govern!
"Am I the Queen now, I ask you? Do you think that your mother ever fails to repay me in evil for what good my uncles may do for the glory of your throne? And mark the difference! My uncles are great princes, descendants of Charlemagne, full of goodwill, and ready to die for you; while this daughter of a leech, or a merchant, Queen of France by a mere chance, is as shrewish as a citizen's wife who is not mistress in her house. The Italian woman is provoked that she cannot set every one by the ears, and she is always coming to me with her pale, solemn face, and then with her pinched lips she begins: 'Daughter, you are the Queen; I am only the second lady in the kingdom'—she is furious, you see, dear heart—'but if I were in your place, I would not wear crimson velvet while the Court is in mourning, and I would appear in public with my hair plainly dressed and with no jewels, for what is unseemly in any lady is even more so in a queen. Nor would I dance myself; I would only see others dance!' That is the kind of thing she says to me."
"Oh, dear Heaven!" cried the King, "I can hear her! Mercy, if she only knew——"
"Why, you still quake before her. She wearies you—say so? We will send her away. By my faith, that she should deceive you might be endured, but to be so tedious——"
"In Heaven's name, be silent, Marie," said the King, at once alarmed and delighted. "I would not have you lose her favor."
"Never fear that she will quarrel with me, with the three finest crowns in the world on my head, my little King," said Mary Stuart. "Even though she hates me for a thousand reasons, she flatters me, to win me from my uncles."
"Hates you?"
"Yes, my angel! And if I had not a thousand such proofs as women can give each other, and such as women only can understand, her persistent opposition to our happy love-making would be enough. Now, is it my fault if your father could never endure Mademoiselle de' Medici? In short, she likes me so little, that you had to be quite in a rage to prevent our having separate sets of rooms here and at Saint-Germain. She declared that it was customary for the Kings and Queens of France. Customary!—It was your father's custom; that is quite intelligible. As to your grandfather, Francis, the good man established the practice for the convenience of his love affairs. So be on your guard; if we are obliged to leave this place, do not let the Grand Master divide us."
"If we leave? But I do not intend to leave this pretty château, whence we see the Loire and all the country around—a town at our feet, the brightest sky in the world above us, and these lovely gardens. Or if I go, it will be to travel with you in Italy and see Raphael's pictures and Saint-Peter's at Rome."
"And the orange-trees. Ah, sweet little King, if you could know how your Mary longs to walk under orange-trees in flower and fruit! Alas! I may never see one! Oh! to hear an Italian song under those fragrant groves, on the shore of a blue sea, under a cloudless sky, and to clasp each other thus!—--"
"Let us be off," said the King.
"Be off!" cried the Grand Master, coming in. "Yes, Sire, you must be off from Blois. Pardon my boldness; but circumstances overrule etiquette, and I have come to beg you to call a Council."
Mary and Francis had started apart on being thus taken by surprise, and they both wore the same expression of offended sovereign Majesty.
"You are too much the Grand Master, Monsieur de Guise," said the young King, suppressing his wrath.
"Devil take lovers!" muttered the Cardinal in Catherine's ear.
"My son," replied the Queen-mother, appearing behind the Cardinal, "the safety of your person is at stake as well as of your kingdom."
"Heresy was awake while you slept, Sire," said the Cardinal.
"Withdraw into the hall," said the little King; "we will hold a Council."
"Madame," said the Duke to the Queen, "your furrier's son has come with some furs which are seasonable for your journey, as we shall probably ride by the Loire.—But he also wishes to speak with madame," he added, turning to the Queen-mother. "While the King is dressing, would you and Her Majesty dismiss him forthwith, so that this trifle may no further trouble us."
"With pleasure," replied Catherine; adding to herself, "If he thinks to be rid of me by such tricks, he little knows me."
The Cardinal and the Duke retired, leaving the two Queens with the King. As he went through the guardroom to go to the council-chamber, the Grand Master desired the usher to bring up the Queen's furrier.
When Christophe saw this official coming towards him from one end of the room to the other, he took him, from his dress, to be some one of importance, and his heart sank within him; but this sensation, natural enough at the