It was in the spring of the year 1609 that at the King's instance I had a suite of apartments fitted up for him at the Arsenal, that he might visit me, whenever it pleased him, without putting my family to inconvenience; in another place will be found an account of the six thousand crowns a year which he was so obliging as to allow me for this purpose. He honoured me by using these rooms, which consisted of a hall, a chamber, a wardrobe, and a closet, two or three times in the course of that year, availing himself of my attendants and cook; and the free opportunities of consulting me on the Great Undertaking, which this plan afforded, led me to hope that notwithstanding the envy of my detractors, he would continue to adopt it. That he did not do so, nor ever visited me after the close of that year, was due not so much to the lamentable event, soon to be related, which within a few months deprived France of her greatest sovereign, as to a strange matter that attended his last stay with me. I have since had cause to think that this did not receive at the time as much attention as it deserved; and have even imagined that had I groped a little deeper into the mystery I might have found a clue to the future as well as the past, and averted one more, and the last, danger from my beloved master. But Providence would not have it so; a slight indisposition under which I was suffering at the time rendered me less able, both in mind and body; the result being that Henry, who was always averse to the publication of these ominous episodes, and held that being known they bred the like in mischievous minds, had his way, the case ending in no more than the punishment of a careless rascal.
On the occasion of this last visit—the third, I think, that he paid me—the King, who had been staying at Chantilly, came to me from Lusarche, where he lay the intervening night. My coaches went to meet him at the gates a little before noon, but he did not immediately arrive, and being at leisure and having assured myself that the dinner of twelve covers, which he had directed to be ready, was in course of preparation, I went with my wife to inspect his rooms and satisfy myself that everything was in order.
They were in charge of La Trape, a man of address and intelligence, whom I have had cause to mention more than once in the course of these memoirs. He met me at the door and conducted us through the rooms with an air of satisfaction; nor could I find the slightest fault, until my wife, looking about her with a woman's eye for minute things, paused by the bed in the chamber, and directed my attention to something on the floor.
She stooped over it. "What is this?" she asked. "Has something been—"
"Upset here?" I said, looking also. There was a little pool of white liquid on the floor beside the bed.
La Trape uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and explained that he had not seen it before; that it had not been there five minutes earlier; and that he did not know how it came to be there now.
"What is it?" I said, looking about for some pitcher that might; have overflowed; but finding none. "Is it milk?"
"I don't know, your excellency," he answered. "But it shall be removed at once."
"See that it is," I said. "Are the boughs in the fire-place fresh?" For the weather was still warm and we had not lit a fire.
"Yes, your excellency; quite fresh."
"Well, see to that, and remove it," I said, pointing to the mess. "It looks ill."
And with that the matter passed from my mind; the more completely as I heard at that moment the sound of the King's approach, and went into the court-yard to receive him. He brought with him Roquelaure, de Vic, Erard the engineer, and some others, but none whom he did not know that I should be glad to receive. He dined well, and after dinner amused himself with seeing the young men ride at the ring, and even rode a course himself with his usual skill; that being, if I remember rightly, the last occasion on which I ever saw him take a lance. Before supper he walked for a time in the hall, with Sillery, for whom he had sent; and after supper, pronouncing himself tired, he dismissed all, and retired with me to his chamber. Here we had some talk on a subject that I greatly dreaded—I mean his infatuation for Madame de Conde; but about eleven o'clock he yawned, and, after thanking me for a reception which he said was quite to his mind, he bade me go to bed.
I was half way to the door when he called me back. "Why, Grand Master," he said, pointing to the little table by the head of the bed on which his night drinks stood, "you might be going to drown me. Do you expect me to drink all these in the night?"
"I think that there is only your posset, sire," I said, "and the lemon-water which you generally drink."
"And two or three other things?"
"Perhaps they have given your majesty some of the Arbois wine that you were good enough to—"
"Tut-tut!" he said, lifting the cover of one of the cups. "This is not wine. It may be a milk-posset."
"Yes, sire; very likely," I said drowsily.
"But it is not!" he answered, when he had smelled it. "It is plain milk! Come, my friend," he continued, looking drolly at me, "have you turned leech, or I babe is arms that you put such strong liquors before me? However, to show you that I have some childish tastes left, and am not so depraved as you have been trying to make me out for the last hour—I will drink your health in it. It would serve you right if I made you pledge me in the same liquor!"
The cup was at his lips when I sprang forward and, heedless of ceremony, caught his arm. "Pardon, sire!" I cried, in sudden agitation. "If that is milk, I gave no order that it should be placed here; and I know nothing of its origin. I beg that you will not drink it, until I have made some inquiry."
"They have all been tasted?" he asked, still holding the cup in his hand with the lid raised, but looking at it gravely.
"They should have been!" I answered. "But La Trape, whom I made answerable for that, is outside. I will go and question him. If you will wait, sire, a moment—"
"No," Henry said. "Have him here."
I gave the order to the pages who were waiting outside, and in a moment La Trape appeared, looking startled and uncomfortable. Naturally, his first glance was given to the King, who had taken his seat on the edge of the bed, but still held the cup in his hand. After asking the King's permission, I said, "What drinks did you place on the table, here, sirrah?"
He looked more uncomfortable at this, but he answered boldly enough that he had served a posset, some lemon water, and some milk.
"But orders were given only for the lemon-water and the posset," I said.
"True, your excellency," he answered. "But when I went to the pantry hatch, to see the under-butler carry up the tray, I found that the milk was on the tray; and I supposed that you had given another order."
"Possibly Madame de Sully," the King said, looking at me, "gave the order to add it?"
"She would not presume to do so, sire," I answered, sternly. "Nor do I in the least understand the matter. But at one thing we can easily arrive. You tasted all of these, man?"
La Trape said he had.
"You drank a quantity, a substantial quantity of each—according to the orders given to you? I persisted.
"Yes, your excellency."
But I caught a guilty look in his eyes, and in a gust of rage I cried out that he lied. "The truth!" I thundered, in a terrible voice. "The truth, you villain; you did not taste all?"
"I did, your excellency; as God is above, I did!" he answered. But he had grown pale, and he looked at the King in a terrified way.
"You did?"
"Yes!"
Yet I did not believe him, and I was about to give him the lie again, when the King intervened. "Quite so," he said to La Trape with a smile. "You drank, my good fellow, of the posset and the lemon water, and you tasted the milk, but you did not drink of it. Is not that the whole truth?"
"Yes, sire," he whimpered, breaking down. "But I—I gave some to a cat."
"And the cat is no worse?"
"No, sire."
"There, Grand Master," the King said, turning to me, "that is the truth, I think. What do you say to it?"
"That the rest is simple," I answered, grimly. "He did not drink it before; but he will drink it now, sire."
The King, sitting on the bed, laughed and looked at La Trape; as if his good-nature almost led him to interpose. But after a moment's hesitation he thought better of it, and handed me the cup. "Very well," he said; "he is your man. Have your way with him. After all, he should have drunk it."
"He shall drink it now, or be broken on the wheel!" I said. "Do you hear, you?" I continued, turning to him in a white heat of rage at the thought of his negligence, and the price it might have cost me. "Take it, and beware that you do not drop or spill it. For I swear that that shall not save you!"
He took the cup with a pale face, and hands that shook so much that he needed both to support the vessel. He hesitated, too, so long that, had I not possessed the best of reasons for believing in his fidelity, I should have suspected him of more than negligence. The shadow of his tall figure seemed to waver on the tapestry behind him; and with a little imagination I might have thought that the lights in the room had sunk. The soft whispering of the pages outside could be heard, and a stifled laugh; but inside there was not a sound. He carried the cup to his lips; then he lowered it again.
I took a step forward.
He recoiled a pace, his face ghastly. "Patience, excellency," he said, hoarsely. "I shall drink it. But I want to speak first."
"Speak!" the King answered.
"If there is death in it, I take God to witness that I know nothing, and knew nothing! There is some witch's work here it is not the first time that I have come across this devil's milk to-day! But I take God to witness I know nothing! Now it is here I will drink it, and—"
He did not finish the sentence, but drawing a deep breath raised the cup to his lips. I saw the apple in his throat rise and fall with the effort he made to swallow, but he drank so slowly that it seemed to me that he would never drain the cap. Nor did he, for when he had swallowed, as far as I could judge from the tilting of the cup, about half of the milk, Henry rose suddenly and, seizing it, took it from him with his own hand.
"That will do," the King said. "Do you feel ill?"
La Trape drew a trembling hand across his brow, on which the sweat stood in beads; but instead of answering he remained silent, gazing fixedly before him. We waited and watched, and at length, when I should think three minutes had elapsed, he changed his position for one of greater ease, and I saw his face relax. The unnatural pallor faded, and the open lips closed. A minute later he spoke. "I feel nothing, sire," he said.
The King looked at me drolly. "Then take five minutes more," he said. "Go, and stare at Judith there, cutting off the head of Holofernes"—for that was the story of the tapestry—"and come when I call you."
La Trape went to the other end of the chamber. "Well," the King said, inviting me by a sign to sit down beside him, "is it a comedy or a tragedy, my friend? Or, tell me, what was it he meant when he said that about the other milk?"
I explained, the matter seeming so trivial now that I came to tell it—though it; had doubtless contributed much to La Trape's fright—that I had to apologize.
"Still it is odd," the King said. "These drinks were not here, at that time, of course?"
"No, sire; they have been brought up within the hour."
"Well, your butler must explain it." And with that he raised his voice and called La Trape back; who came, looking red and sheepish.
"Not dead yet?" the King said.
"No, sire."
"Nor ill?"
"No, sire."
"Then begone. Or, stay!" Henry continued. "Throw the rest of this stuff into the fire-place. It may be harmless, but I have no mind to drink it by mistake."
La Trape emptied the cup among the green boughs that filled the hearth, and hastened to withdraw. It seemed to be too late to make further inquiries that night; so after listening to two or three explanations which the King hazarded, but which had all too fanciful an air in my eyes, I took my leave and retired.
Whether, however, the scene had raised too violent a commotion in my mind, or I was already sickening for the illness I have mentioned, I found it impossible to sleep; and spent the greater part of the night in a fever of fears and forebodings. The responsibility which the King's presence cast upon me lay so heavily upon my waking mind that I could not lie; and long before the King's usual hour of rising I was at his door inquiring how he did. No one knew, for the page whose turn it was to sleep at his feet had not come out; but while I stood questioning, the King's voice was heard, bidding me enter. I went in, and found him sitting up with a haggard face, which told me, before he spoke, that he had slept little better than I had. The shutters were thrown wide open, and the cold morning light poured into the room with an effect rather sombre than bright; the huge figures on the tapestry looming huger from a drab and melancholy background, and the chamber presenting all those features of disorder that in a sleeping-room lie hid at night, only to show themselves in a more vivid shape in the morning.
The King sent his page out, and bade me sit by him. "I have had a bad night," he said, with a shudder. "Grand Master, I doubt that astrologer was right, and I shall never see Germany, nor carry out my designs."
Seeing the state in which he was, I could think of nothing better than to rally him, and even laugh at him. "You think so now, sire," I said. "It is the cold hour. By and by, when you have broken your fast, you will think differently."
"But, it may be, less correctly," he answered; and as he sat looking before him with gloomy eyes, he heaved a deep sigh. "My friend," he said, mournfully, "I want to live, and I am going to die."
"Of what?" I asked, gaily.
"I do not know; but I dreamed last night that a house fell on me in the Rue de la Ferronerie, and I cannot help thinking that I shall die in that way."
"Very well," I said. "It is well to know that."
He asked me peevishly what I meant.
"Only," I explained, "that, in that case, as your Majesty need never pass through that street, you have it in your hands to live for ever."
"Perhaps it may not happen there—in that very street," he answered.
"And perhaps it may not happen yet," I rejoined. And then, more seriously, "Come, sire," I continued, "why this sudden weakness? I have known you face death a hundred times."
"But not after such a dream as I had last night," he said, with a grimace—yet I could see that he was already comforted. "I thought that I was passing along that street in my coach, and on a sudden, between St. Innocent's church and the notary's—there is a notary's there?"
"Yes, sire," I said, somewhat surprised.
"I heard a great roar, and something struck me down, and I found myself pinned to the ground, in darkness, with my mouth full of dust, and an immense beam on my chest. I lay for a time in agony, fighting for breath, and then my brain seemed to burst in my head, and I awoke."
"I have had such a dream, sire," I said, drily.
"Last night?"
"No," I said, "not last night."
He saw what I meant, and laughed; and being by this time quite himself, left that and passed to discussing the strange affair of La Trape and the milk. "Have you found, as yet, who was good enough to supply it?" he asked.
"No, sire," I answered. "But I will see La Trape, and as soon as I have learned anything, your majesty shall know it."
"I suppose he is not far off now," he suggested. "Send for him. Ten to one he will have made inquiries, and it will amuse us."
I went to the door and, opening it a trifle, bade the page who waited send La Trape. He passed on the message to a crowd of sleepy attendants, and quickly, but not before I had gone back to the King's bedside, La Trape entered.
Having my eyes turned the other way, I did not at once remark anything. But the King did; and his look of astonishment, no less than the exclamation which accompanied it, arrested my attention. "St. Gris, man!" he cried. "What is the matter? Speak!"
La Trape, who had stopped just within the door, made an effort to do so, but no sound passed his lips; while his pallor and the fixed glare of his eyes filled me with the worst apprehensions. It was impossible to look at him and not share his fright, and I stepped forward and cried out to him to speak. "Answer the King, man," I said. "What is it?"
He made an effort, and with a ghastly grimace, "The cat is dead!" he said.
For a moment we were all silent. Then I looked at the King, and he at me, with gloomy meaning in our eyes. He was the first to speak. "The cat to whom you gave the milk?" he said.
"Yes, sire," La Trape answered, in a voice that seemed to come from his heart.
"But still, courage!" the King cried. "Courage, man! A dose that would kill a cat may not kill a man. Do you feel ill?"
"Oh, yes, sire," La Trape moaned.
"What do you feel?"
"I have a trembling in all my limbs, and ah—ah, my God, I am a dead man! I have a burning here—a pain like hot coals in my vitals!" And, leaning against the wall, the unfortunate man clasped his arms round his body and bent himself up and down in a paroxysm of suffering.
"A doctor! a doctor!" Henry cried, thrusting one leg out of bed. "Send for Du Laurens!" Then, as I went to the door to do so, "Can you be sick, man?" he asked. "Try!"
"No, no; it is impossible!"
"But try, try! when did this cat die?"
"It is outside," La Trape groaned. He could say no more.
I had opened the door by this time, and found the attendants, whom the man's cries had alarmed, in a cluster round it. Silencing them sternly, I bade one go for M. Du Laurens, the King's physician, while another brought me the cat that was dead.
The page who had spent the night in the King's chamber, fetched it. I told him to bring it in, and ordering the others to let the doctor pass when he arrived, I closed the door upon their curiosity, and went back to the King. He had left his bed and was standing near La Trape, endeavouring to hearten him; now telling him to tickle his throat with a feather, and now watching his sufferings in silence, with a face of gloom and despondency that sufficiently betrayed his reflections. At sight of the page, however, carrying the dead cat, he turned briskly, and we both examined the beast which, already rigid, with staring eyes and uncovered teeth, was not a sight to cheer anyone, much less the stricken man. La Trape, however, seemed to be scarcely aware of its presence. He had sunk upon a chest which stood against the wall, and, with his body strangely twisted, was muttering prayers, while he rocked himself to and fro unceasingly.
"It's stiff," the King said in a low voice. "It has been dead some hours."
"Since midnight," I muttered.
"Pardon, sire," the page, who was holding the cat, said; "I saw it after midnight. It was alive then."
"You saw it!" I exclaimed. "How? Where?"
"Here, your excellency," the boy answered, quailing a little.
"What? In this room?"
"Yes, excellency. I heard a noise about—I think about two o'clock—and his Majesty breathing very heavily, It was a noise like a cat spitting. It frightened me, and I rose from my pallet and went round the bed. I was just in time to see the cat jump down."
"From the bed?"
"Yes, your excellency. From his Majesty's chest, I think."
"And you are sure that it was this cat?"
"Yes, sire; for as soon as it was on the floor it began to writhe and roll and bite itself, with all its fur on end, like a mad cat. Then it flew to the door and tried to get out, and again began to spit furiously. I thought that it would awaken the King, and I let it out."
"And then the King did awake?"
"He was just awaking, your excellency."
"Well, sire," I said, smiling, "this accounts, I think, for your dream of the house that fell, and the beam that lay on your chest."
It would have been difficult to say whether at this the King looked more foolish or more relieved. Whichever the sentiment he entertained, however, it was quickly cut short by a lamentable cry that drove the blood from our cheeks. La Trape was in another paroxysm. "Oh, the poor man!" Henry cried.
"I suppose that the cat came in unseen," I said; "with him last night, and then stayed in the room?"
"Doubtless."
"And was seized with a paroxysm here?"
"Such as he has now!" Henry answered; for La Trape had fallen to the floor. "Such as he has now!" he repeated, his eyes flaming, his face pale. "Oh, my friend, this is too much. Those who do these things are devils, not men. Where is Du Laurens? Where is the doctor? He will perish before our eyes."
"Patience, sire," I said. "He will come."
"But in the meantime the man dies."
"No, no," I said, going to La Trape, and touching his hand. "Yet, he is very cold." And turning, I sent the page to hasten the doctor. Then I begged the King to allow me to have the man conveyed into another room. "His sufferings distress you, sire, and you do him no good," I said.
"No, he shall not go!" he answered. "Ventre Saint Gris! man, he is dying for me! He is dying in my place. He shall die here."
Still ill satisfied, I was about to press him farther, when La Trape raised his voice, and feebly asked for me. A page who had taken the other's place was supporting his head, and two or three of my gentlemen, who had come in unbidden, were looking on with scared faces. I went to the poor fellow's side, and asked what I could do for him.
"I am dying!" he muttered, turning up his eyes. "The doctor! the doctor!"
I feared that he was passing, but I bade him have courage. "In a moment he will be here," I said; while the King in distraction sent messenger on messenger.
"He will come too late," the sinking man answered. "Excellency?"
"Yes, my good fellow," I said, stooping that I might hear him the better.
"I took ten pistoles yesterday from a man to get him a scullion's place; and there is none vacant."
"It is forgiven," I said, to soothe him.
"And your excellency's favourite hound, Diane," he gasped. "She had three puppies, not two. I sold the other."
"Well, it is forgiven, my friend. It is forgiven. Be easy," I said kindly.
"Ah, I have been a villain," he groaned. "I have lived loosely. Only last night I kissed the butler's wench, and—"
"Be easy, be easy," I said. "Here is the doctor. He will save you yet."
And I made way for M. Du Laurens, who, having saluted the King, knelt down by the sick man, and felt his pulse; while we all stood round, looking down on the two with grave faces. It seemed to me that the man's eyes were growing dim, and I had little hope. The King was the first to break the silence. "You have hope?" he said. "You can save him?"
"Pardon, sire, a moment," the physician answered, rising from his knees. "Where is the cat?"
Someone brought it, and M. Du Laurens, after looking at it, said curtly, "It has been poisoned."
La Trape uttered a groan of despair. "At what hour did it take the milk?" the physician asked.
"A little before ten last evening," I said, seeing that La Trape was too far gone for speech.
"Ah! And the man?"
"An hour later."
Du Laurens shook his head, and was preparing to lay down the cat, which he had taken in his hands, when some appearance led him to examine it again and more closely. "Why what is this?" he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise, as he took the body to the window. "There is a large swelling under its chin."
No one answered.
"Give me a pair of scissors," he continued; and then, after a minute, when they had been handed to him and he had removed the fur, "Ha!" he said gravely, "this is not so simple as I thought. The cat has been poisoned, but by a prick with some sharp instrument."
The King uttered an exclamation of incredulity. "But it drank the milk," he said. "Some milk that—"
"Pardon, sire," Du Laurens answered positively. "A draught of milk, however drugged, does not produce an external swelling with a small blue puncture in the middle."
"What does?" the King asked, with something like a sneer.
"Ah, that is the question," the physician answered. "A ring, perhaps, with a poison-chamber and hollow dart."
"But there is no question of that here," I said. "Let us be clear. Do you say that the cat did not die of the milk?"
"I see no proof that it did," he answered. "And many things to show that it died of poison administered by puncture."
"But then," I answered, in no little confusion of thought, "what of La Trape?"
He turned, and with him all eyes, to the unfortunate equerry, who still lay seemingly moribund, with his head propped on some cushions. M. Du Laurens advanced to him and again felt his pulse, an operation which appeared to bring a slight tinge of colour to the fading cheeks. "How much milk did he drink?" the physician asked after a pause.
"More than half a pint," I answered.
"And what besides?"
"A quantity of the King's posset, and a little lemonade."
"And for supper? What did you have?" the leech continued, addressing himself to his patient.
"I had some wine," he answered feebly. "And a little Frontignac with the butler; and some honey-mead that the gipsy-wench gave me.
"The gipsy-wench?"
"The butler's girl, of whom I spoke."
M. Du Laurens rose slowly to his feet, and, to my amazement, dealt the prostrate man a hearty kick; bidding him at the same time to rise. "Get up, fool! Get up," he continued harshly, yet with a ring of triumph in his voice, "all you have got is the colic, and it is no more than you deserve. Get up, I say, and beg his Majesty's pardon!"
"But," the King remonstrated in a tone of anger, "the man is dying!"
"He is no more dying than you are, sire," the other answered. "Or, if he is, it is of fright. There, he can stand as well as you or I!"
And to be sure, as he spoke, La Trape scrambled to his feet, and with a mien between shame and doubt stood staring at us, the very picture of a simpleton. It was no wonder that his jaw fell and his impudent face burned; for the room shook with such a roar of laughter, at first low, and then as the King joined in it, swelling louder and louder, as few of us had ever heard, Though I was not a little mortified by the way in which we had deceived ourselves, I could not help joining in the laugh; particularly as the more closely we reviewed the scene in which we had taken part, the more absurd seemed the jest. It was long before silence could be obtained; but at length Henry, quite exhausted by the violence of his mirth held up his hand. I seized the opportunity.
"Why, you rascal!" I said, addressing La Trape, who did not know which way to look, "where are the ten crowns of which you defrauded the scullion?"
"To be sure," the King said, going off into another roar. "And the third puppy?"
"Yes," I said, "you scoundrel; and the third puppy?"
"Ay, and the gipsy girl?" the King continued. "The butler's wench, what of her? And of your evil living? Begone, begone, rascal!" he continued, falling into a fresh paroxysm, "or you will kill US in earnest. Would nothing else do for you but to die in my chamber? Begone!"
I took this as a hint to clear the room, not only of La Trape himself but of all; and presently only I and Du Laurens remained with the King. It then appeared that there was still a mystery, and one which it behoved us to clear up; inasmuch as Du Laurens took the cat's death very seriously, insisting that it had died of poison administered in a most sinister fashion, and one that could not fail to recall to our minds the Borgian popes. It needed no more than this to direct my suspicions to the Florentines who swarmed about the Queen, and against whom the King had let drop so many threats. But the indisposition which excitement had for a time kept at bay began to return upon me; and I was presently glad to drop the subject; and retire to my own apartments, leaving the King to dress.
Consequently, I was not with him when the strange discovery which followed was made. In the ordinary course of dressing, one of the servants going to the fire-place to throw away a piece of waste linen, thought that he heard a rat stir among the boughs. He moved them, and in a moment a small snake crawled out, hissing and darting out its tongue. It was killed, and then it at once occurred to the King that he had the secret of the cat's death. He came to me hot-foot with the news, and found me with Du Laurens who was in the act of ordering me to bed.
I confess that I heard the story almost with apathy, so ill was I. Not so the physician. After examining the snake, which by the King's orders had been brought for my inspection, he pronounced that it was not of French origin. "It has escaped from some snake-charmer," he said.
The King seemed to be incredulous.
"I assure you that I speak the truth, sire," Du Laurens persisted.
"But how then did it come in my room?"
"That is what I should like to know, sire," the physician answered severely; "and yet I think that I can guess. It was put there, I fancy, by the person who sent up the milk to your chamber."
"Why do you say so?" Henry asked
"Because, sire, all snakes are inordinately fond of milk."
"Ah!" the King said slowly, with a change of countenance and a shudder which he could not repress; "and there was milk on the floor in the morning."
"Yes, sire; on the floor, and beside the head of your bed."
But at this stage I was attacked by a fit of illness so severe that I had to break in on the discussion, and beg the King to withdraw. The sickness increased on me during the day, and by noon I was prostrate, neither taking interest in anything, nor allowing others, who began to fear for my life, to divert their attention. After twenty-four hours I began to mend, but still several days elapsed before I was able to devote myself to business; and then I found that, the master-mind being absent, and the King, as always, lukewarm in the pursuit, nothing had been done to detect and punish the criminal.
I could not rest easy, however, with so abominable a suspicion attaching to my house; and as soon as I could bend my mind to the matter I began an inquiry. At the first stage, however, I came to an IMPASSE; the butler, who had been long in my service, cleared himself without difficulty, but a few questions discovered the fact that a person who had been in his department on the evening in question was now to seek, having indeed disappeared from that time. This was the gipsy-girl, whom La Trape had mentioned, and whose presence in my household seemed to need the more elucidation the farther I pushed the inquiry. In the end I had the butler punished, but though my agents sought the girl through Paris, and even traced her to Meaux, she was never discovered.
The affair, at the King's instance, was not made public; nevertheless, it gave him so strong a distaste for the Arsenal that he did not again visit me, nor use the rooms I had prepared. That later, when the first impression wore off, he would have done so, is probable; but, alas, within a few months the malice of his enemies prevailed over my utmost precautions, and robbed me of the best of masters; strangely enough, as all the world now knows, at the corner of that very Rue de la Feronnerie which he had seen in his dream.
The passion which Henry still felt for Madame de Conde, and which her flight from the country was far from assuaging, had a great share in putting him upon the immediate execution of the designs we had so long prepared. Looking to find in the stir and bustle of a German campaign that relief of mind which the Court could no longer afford him, he discovered in the unhoped-for wealth of his treasury an additional incitement; and now waited only for the opening of spring and the Queen's coronation to remove the last obstacles that kept him from the field.
Nevertheless, relying on my assurances that all things were ready, and persuaded that the more easy he showed himself the less prepared would he find the enemy, he made no change in his habits; but in March, 1610, went, as usual, to Fontainebleau, where he diverted himself with hunting. It was during this visit that the Court credited him with seeing—I think, on the Friday before the Feast of the Virgin—the Great Huntsman; and even went so far as to specify the part of the forest in which he came upon it, and the form—that of a gigantic black horseman, surrounded by hounds—which it assumed The spectre had not been seen since the year 1598; nevertheless, the story spread widely, those who whispered it citing in its support not only the remarkable agitation into which the Queen fell publicly on the evening of that day, but also some strange particulars that attended the King's return from the forest; and, being taken up and repeated, and confirmed, as many thought, by the unhappy sequence of his death, the fable found a little later almost universal credence, so that it may now be found even in books.
As it happened, however, I was that day at Fontainebleau, and hunted with the King; and, favoured both by chance and the confidence with which my master never failed to honour me, am able not only to refute this story, but to narrate the actual facts from which it took its rise. And though there are some, I know, who boast that they had the tale from the King's own mouth, I undertake to prove either that they are romancers who seek to add an inch to their stature, or dull fellows who placed their own interpretation on the hasty words he vouchsafed such chatterers.
As a fact, the King, on that day wishing to discuss with me the preparations for the Queen's entry, bade me keep close to him, since he had more inclination for my company than the chase. But the crowd that attended him was so large, the day being fine and warm—and comprised, besides, so many ladies, whose badinage and gaiety he could never forego—that I found him insensibly drawn from me. Far from being displeased, I was glad to see him forget the moodiness which had of late oppressed him; and beyond keeping within sight of him, gave up, for the time, all thought of affairs, and found in the beauty of the spectacle sufficient compensation. The bright dresses and waving feathers of the party showed to the greatest advantage, as the long cavalcade wound through the heather and rocks of the valley below the Apremonts; and whether I looked to front or rear—on the huntsmen, with their great horns, or the hounds straining in the leashes—I was equally charmed with a sight at once joyous and gallant, and one to which the calls of duty had of late made me a stranger.
On a sudden a quarry was started, and the company, galloping off pell-mell, with a merry burst of music, were in a moment dispersed, some taking this track, and others that, through the rocks and DEBRIS that make that part of the forest difficult. Singling out the King, I kept as near him as possible until the chase led us into the Apremont coverts, where, the trees growing thickly, and the rides cut through them being intricate, I lost him for a while. Again, however, I caught sight of him flying down a ride bordered by dark-green box-trees, against which his white hunting coat showed vividly; but now he was alone, and riding in a direction which each moment carried him farther from the line of the chase, and entangled him more deeply in the forest.
Supposing that he had made a bad cast and was in error, I dashed the spurs into my horse, and galloped after him; then, finding that he still held his own, and that I did not overtake him, but that, on the contrary, he was riding at the top of his speed, I called to him. "You are in error, sire, I think!" I cried. "The hounds are the other way!"
He heard, for he raised his hand, and, without turning his head, made me a sign; but whether of assent or denial, I could not tell. And he still held on his course. Then, for a moment, I fancied that his horse had got the better of him, and was running away; but no sooner had the thought occurred to me than I saw that he was spurring it, and exciting it to its utmost speed, so that we reached the end of that ride, and rushed through another and still another, always making, I did not fail to note, for the most retired part of the forest.
We had proceeded in this way about a mile, and the sound of the hunt had quite died away behind us, and I was beginning to chafe, as well as marvel, at conduct so singular, when at last I saw that he was slackening his pace. My horse, which was on the point of failing, began, in turn, to overhaul his, while I looked out with sharpened curiosity for the object of pursuit. I could see nothing, however, and no one; and had just satisfied myself that this was one of the droll freaks in which he would sometimes indulge, and that in a second or two he would turn and laugh at my discomfiture, when, on a sudden, with a final pull at the reins, he did turn, and showed me a face flushed with passion and chagrin.
I was so taken aback that I cried out. "MON DIEU! sire," I said. "What is it? What is the matter?"
"Matter enough!" he cried, with an oath. And on that, halting his horse, he looked at me as if he would read my heart. "VENTRE DE SAINT GRIS!" he said, in a voice that made me tremble, "if I were sure that there was no mistake, I would—I would never see your face again!"
I uttered an exclamation.
"Have you not deceived me?" quoth he.
"Oh, sire, I am weary of these suspicions!" I answered, affecting an indifference I did not feel. "If your Majesty does not—"
But he cut me short. "Answer me!" he said harshly, his mouth working in his beard and his eyes gleaming with excitement. "Have you not deceived me?"
"No, sire!" I said.
"Yet you have told me day by day that Madame de Conde remained in Brussels?"
"Certainly!"
"And you still say so?"
"Most certainly!" I answered firmly, beginning to think that his passion had turned his brain. "I had despatches to that effect this morning."
"Of what date?"
"Three days gone. The courier travelled night and day."
"They may be true, and still she may be here to-day?" he said, staring at me.
"Impossible, sire!"
"But, man, I have just seen her!" he cried impatiently.
"Madame de Conde?"
"Yes, Madame de Conde, or I am a madman!" Henry answered, speaking a little more moderately. "I saw her gallop out of the patch of rocks at the end of the Dormoir—where the trees begin. She did not heed the line of the hounds, but turned straight down the boxwood ride; and, after that, led as I followed. Did you not see her?"
"No, sire," I said, inexpressibly alarmed—I could take it for nothing but fantasy—"I saw no one."
"And I saw her as clearly as I see you," he answered. "She wore the yellow ostrich-feather she wore last year, and rode her favourite chestnut horse with a white stocking. But I could have sworn to her by her figure alone; and she waved her hand to me."
"But, sire, out of the many ladies riding to-day—"
"There is no lady wearing a yellow feather," he answered passionately. "And the horse! And I knew her, man! Besides, she waved to me! And, for the others—why should they turn from the hunt and take to the woods?"
I could not answer this, but I looked at him in fear; for, as it was impossible that the Princess de Conde could be here, I saw no alternative but to think him smitten with madness. The extravagance of the passion which he had entertained for her, and the wrath into which the news of her flight with her young husband had thrown him, to say nothing of the depression under which he had since suffered, rendered the idea not so unlikely as it now seems. At any rate, I was driven for a moment to entertain it; and gazed at him in silence, a prey to the most dreadful apprehensions.
We stood in a narrow ride, bordered by evergreens, with which that part of the forest is planted; and but for the songs of the birds the stillness would have been absolute. On a sudden the King removed his eyes from me, and, walking his horse a pace or two along the ride, uttered a cry of joy.
He pointed to the ground. "We are right!" he said. "There are her tracks! Come! We will overtake her yet!"
I looked, and saw the fresh prints of a horse's shoes, and felt a great weight roll off my mind, for at least he had seen someone. I no longer hesitated to fall in with his humour, but, riding after him, kept at his elbow until he reached the end of the ride. Here, a vista opening right and left, and the ground being hard and free from tracks, we stood at a loss; until the King, whose eyesight was always of the keenest, uttered an exclamation, and started from me at a gallop.
I followed more slowly, and saw him dismount and pick up a glove, which, even at that distance, he had discerned lying in the middle of one of the paths. He cried, with a flushed face, that it was Madame de Conde's; and added: "It has her perfume—her perfume, which no one else uses!"
I confess that this so staggered me that I knew not what to think; but, between sorrow at seeing my master so infatuated and bewilderment at a riddle that grew each moment more perplexing, I sat gaping at Henry like a man without counsel. However, at the moment, he needed none, but, getting to his saddle as quickly as he could, he began again to follow the tracks of the horse's feet, which here were visible, the path running through a beech wood. The branches were still bare, and the shining trunks stood up like pillars, the ground about them being soft. We followed the prints through this wood for a mile and a half or more, and then, with a cry, the King darted from me, and, in an instant, was racing through the wood at break-neck speed.
I had a glimpse of a woman flying far ahead of us; and now hidden from us by the trunks and now disclosed; and could even see enough to determine that she wore a yellow feather drooping from her hat, and was in figure not unlike the Princess. But that was all; for, once started, the inequalities of the ground drew my eyes from the flying form, and, losing it, I could not again recover it. On the contrary, it was all I could do to keep up with the King; and of the speed at which the woman was riding, could best judge by the fact that in less than five minutes he, too, pulled-up with a gesture of despair, and waited for me to come abreast of him.
"You saw her?" he said, his face grim, and with something of suspicion lurking in it.
"Yes, sire," I answered, "I saw a woman, and a woman with a yellow feather; but whether it was the Princess—"
"It was!" he said. "If not, why should she flee from us?"
To that, again, I had not a word to say, and for a moment we rode in silence. Observing, however, that this last turn had brought us far on the way home, I called the King's attention to this; but he had sunk into a fit of gloomy abstraction, and rode along with his eyes on the ground. We proceeded thus until the slender path we followed brought up into the great road that leads through the forest to the kennels and the new canal.
Here I asked him if he would not return to the chase, as the day was still young.
"Mon Dieu, no!" he answered passionately. "I have other work to do. Hark ye, M. le Duc, do you still think that she is in Brussels?"
"I swear that she was there three days ago, sire!"
"And you are not deceiving me? If it be so, God forgive you, for I shall not!"
"It is no trick of mine, sire," I answered firmly.
"Trick?" he cried, with a flash of his eyes. "A trick, you say? No, VENTRE DE SAINT GRIS! there is no man in France dare trick me so!"
I did not contradict him, the rather as we were now close to the kennels, and I was anxious to allay his excitement; that it might not be detected by the keen eyes that lay in wait for us, and so add to the gossip to which his early return must give rise. I hoped that at that hour he might enter unperceived, by way of the kennels and the little staircase; but in this I was disappointed, the beauty of the day having tempted a number of ladies, and others who had not hunted, to the terrace by the canal; whence, walking up and down, their fans and petticoats fluttering in the sunshine, and their laughter and chatter filling the air, they were able to watch our approach at their leisure.
Unfortunately, Henry had no longer the patience and self-control needful for such a RENCONTRE. He dismounted with a dark and peevish air, and, heedless of the staring, bowing throng, strode up the steps. Two or three, who stood high in favour, put themselves forward to catch a smile or a word, but he vouchsafed neither. He walked through them with a sour air, and entered the chateau with a precipitation that left all tongues wagging.
To add to the misfortune, something—I forget what—detained me a moment, and that cost us dear. Before I could cross the terrace, Concini, the Italian, came up, and, saluting me, said that the Queen desired to speak to me.
"The Queen?" I said, doubtfully, foreseeing trouble.
"She is waiting at the gate of the farther court," he answered politely, his keen black eyes reverting, with eager curiosity, to the door by which the King had disappeared.
I could not refuse, and went to her. "The King has returned early, M. le Duc?" she said.
"Yes, madame," I answered. "He had a fancy to discuss affairs to-day, and we lost the hounds."
"Together?"
"I had the honour, Madame."
"You do not seem to have agreed very well?" she said, smiling.
"Madame," I answered bluntly, "his Majesty has no more faithful servant; but we do not always agree."
She raised her hand, and, with a slight gesture, bade her ladies stand back, while her face lost its expression of good-temper, and grew sharp and dark. "Was it about the Conde?" she said, in a low, grating voice. "No, madame," I answered; "it was about certain provisions. The King's ear had been grossly abused, and his Majesty led to believe—"
"Faugh!" she cried, with a wave of contempt, "that is an old story! I am sick of it. Is she still at Brussels?"
"Still, madame."
"Then see that she stops there!" her Majesty retorted, with a meaning look.
And with that she dismissed me, and went into the chateau. I proposed to rejoin the King; but, to my chagrin, I found, when I reached the closet, that he had already sent for Varennes, and was shut up with him. I went back to my rooms therefore, and, after changing my hunting suit and transacting some necessary business, sat down to dinner with Nicholas, the King's secretary, a man fond of the table, whom I often entertained. He kept me in talk until the afternoon was well advanced, and we were still at table when Maignan appeared and told me that the King had sent for me.
"I will go," I said, rising.
"He is with the Queen, your Excellency," he continued.
This somewhat surprised me, but I thought no evil; and, finding one of the Queen's Italian pages at the door waiting to conduct me, I followed him across the court that lay between my lodgings and her apartments. Two or three of the King's gentlemen were in the anteroom when I arrived, and Varennes, who was standing by one of the fire-places toying with a hound, made me a face of dismay; he could not speak, owing to the company.
Still this, in a degree, prepared me for the scene in the chamber, where I found the Queen storming up and down the room, while the King, still in his hunting dress, sat on a low chair by the fire, apparently drying his boots. Mademoiselle Galigai, the Queen's waiting-woman, stood in the background; but more than this I had not time to observe, for, before I had reached the middle of the floor, the Queen turned on me, and began to abuse me with a vehemence which fairly shocked me.
"And you!" she cried, "who speak so slow, and look so solemn, and all the time do his dirty work, like the meanest cook he has ennobled! It is well you are here! ENFIN, you are found out—you and your provisions! Your provisions, of which you talked in the wood!"
"MON DIEU!" the King groaned; "give me patience!"
"He has given me patience these ten years, sire!" she retorted passionately. "Patience to see myself flouted by your favourites, insulted and displaced, and set aside! But this is too much! It was enough that you made yourself the laughing-stock of France once with this madame! I will not have it again—no: though twenty of your counsellors frown at me!"
"Your Majesty seems displeased," I said. "But as I am quite in the dark—"
"Liar!" she cried, giving way to her fury. "When you were with her this morning! When you saw her! When you stooped to—"
"Madame!" the King said sternly, "if you forget yourself, be good enough to remember that you are speaking to French gentlemen, not to traders of Florence!"
She sneered. "You think to wound me by that!" she cried, breathing quickly. "But I have my grandfather's blood in me, sire; and no King of France—"
"One King of France will presently make your uncle of that blood sing small!" the King answered viciously. "So much for that; and for the rest, sweetheart, softly, softly!"
"Oh!" she cried, "I will go: I will not stay to be outraged by that woman's presence!"
I had now an inkling what was the matter; and discerning that the quarrel was a more serious matter than their every-day bickerings, and threatened to go to lengths that might end in disaster, I ignored the insult her Majesty had flung at me, and entreated her to be calm. "If I understand aright, madame," I said, "you have some grievance against his Majesty. Of that I know nothing. But I also understand that you allege something against me; and it is to speak to that, I presume, that I am summoned. If you will deign to put the matter into words—"
"Words!" she cried. "You have words enough! But get out of this, Master Grave-Airs, if you can! Did you, or did you not, tell me this morning that the Princess of Conde was in Brussels?"
"I did, madame."
"Although half an hour before you had seen her, you had talked with her, you had been with her in the forest?"
"But I had not, madame!"
"What?" she cried, staring at me, surprised doubtless that I manifested no confusion. "Do you say that you did not see her?"
"I did not."
"Nor the King?"
"The King, Madame, cannot have seen her this morning," I said, "because he is here and she is in Brussels."
"You persist in that?"
"Certainly!" I said. "Besides, madame," I continued, "I have no doubt that the King has given you his word—"
"His word is good for everyone but his wife!" she answered bitterly. "And for yours, M. le Duc, I will show you what it is worth. Mademoiselle, call—"
"Nay, madame!" I said, interrupting her with spirit, "if you are going to call your household to contradict me—"
"But I am not!" she cried in a voice of triumph that, for the moment, disconcerted me. "Mademoiselle, send to M. de Bassompierre's lodgings, and bid him come to me!"
The King whistled softly, while I, who knew Bassompierre to be devoted to him, and to be, in spite of the levity to which his endless gallantries bore witness, a man of sense and judgment, prepared myself for a serious struggle; judging that we were in the meshes of an intrigue, wherein it was impossible to say whether the Queen figured as actor or dupe. The passion she evinced as she walked to and fro with clenched hands, or turned now and again to dart a fiery glance at the Cordovan curtain that hid the door, was so natural to her character that I found myself leaning to the latter supposition. Still, in grave doubt what part Bassompierre was to play, I looked for his coming as anxiously as anyone. And probably the King shared this feeling; but he affected indifference, and continued to sit over the fire with an air of mingled scorn and peevishness.
At length Bassompierre entered, and, seeing the King, advanced with an open brow that persuaded me, at least, of his innocence. Attacked on the instant, however, by the Queen, and taken by surprise, as it were, between two fires—though the King kept silence, and merely shrugged his shoulders—his countenance fell. He was at that time one of the handsomest gallants about the Court, thirty years old, and the darling of women; but at this his APLOMB failed him, and with it my heart sank also.
"Answer, sir! answer!" the Queen cried. "And without subterfuge! Who was it, sir, whom you saw come from the forest this morning?"
"Madame?"
"In one word!"
"If your Majesty will—"
"I will permit you to answer," the Queen exclaimed.
"I saw his Majesty return," he faltered—"and M. de Sully."
"Before them! before them!"
"I may have been mistaken."
"Pooh, man!" the Queen cried with biting contempt. "You have told it to half-a-dozen. Discretion comes a little late."
"Well, if you will, madame," he said, striving to assert himself, but cutting a poor figure, "I fancied that I saw Madame de Conde—"
"Come out of the wood ten minutes before the King?"
"It may have been twenty," he muttered.
But the Queen cared no more for him. She turned, looking superb in her wrath, to the King. "Now, sir!" she said. "Am I to bear this?"
"Sweet!" the King said, governing his temper in a way that surprised me, "hear reason, and you shall have it in a word. How near was Bassompierre to the lady he saw?"
"I was not within fifty paces of her!" the favourite cried eagerly.
"But others saw her!" the Queen rejoined sharply. "Madame Paleotti, who was with the gentleman, saw her also, and knew her."
"At a distance of fifty paces?" the King said drily. "I don't attach much weight to that." And then, rising, with a slight yawn. "Madame," he continued, with the air of command which he knew so well how to assume, "for the present, I am tired! If Madame de Conde is here, it will not be difficult to get further evidence of her presence. If she is at Brussels, that fact, too, you can ascertain. Do the one or the other, as you please; but, for to-day, I beg that you will excuse me."
"And that," the Queen cried shrilly—"that is to be—"
"All, madame!" the King said sternly. "Moreover, let me have no prating outside this room. Grand-Master, I will trouble you."
And with these words, uttered in a voice and with an air that silenced even the angry woman before us, he signed to me to follow him, and went from the room; the first glance of his eye stilling the crowded ante-chamber, as if the shadow of death passed with him. I followed him to his closet; but, until he reached it, had no inkling of what was in his thoughts. Then he turned to me.
"Where is she?" he said sharply.
I stared at him a moment. "Pardon, sire?" I said. "Do you think that it was Madame de Conde?"
"Why not?"
"She is in Brussels."
"I tell you I saw her this morning!" he answered. "Go, learn all you can! Find her! Find her! If she has returned, I will—God knows what I will do!" he cried, in a voice shamefully broken. "Go; and send Varennes to me. I shall sup alone: let no one wait."
I would have remonstrated with him, but he was in no mood to bear it; and, sad at heart, I withdrew, feeling the perplexity, which the situation caused me, a less heavy burden than the pain with which I viewed the change that had of late come over my master; converting him from the gayest and most DEBONAIRE of men into this morose and solitary dreamer. Here, had I felt any temptation to moralise on the tyranny of passion, was the occasion; but, as the farther I left the closet behind me the more instant became the crisis, the present soon reasserted its power. Reflecting that Henry, in this state of uncertainty, was capable of the wildest acts, and that not less was to be feared from his imprudence than from the Queen's resentment, I cudgelled my brains to explain the RENCONTRE of the morning; but as the courier, whom I questioned, confirmed the report of my agents, and asseverated most confidently that he had left Madame in Brussels, I was flung back on the alternative of an accidental resemblance. This, however, which stood for a time as the most probable solution, scarcely accounted for the woman's peculiar conduct, and quite fell to the ground when La Trape, making cautious inquiries, ascertained that no lady hunting that day had worn a yellow feather. Again, therefore, I found myself at a loss; and the dejection of the King and the Queen's ill-temper giving rise to the wildest surmises, and threatening each hour to supply the gossips of the Court with a startling scandal, the issue of which no one could foresee, I went so far as to take into my confidence MM. Epernon and Montbazon; but with no result.
Such being my state of mind, and such the suspense I suffered during two days, it may be imagined that M. Bassompierre was not more happy. Despairing of the King's favour unless he could clear up the matter, and by the event justify his indiscretion, he became for those two days the wonder, and almost the terror, of the Court. Ignorant of what he wanted, the courtiers found only insolence in his mysterious questions, and something prodigious in an activity which carried him in one day to Paris and back, and on the following to every place in the vicinity where news of the fleeting beauty might by any possibility be gained; so that he far outstripped my agents, who were on the same quest. But though I had no mean opinion of his abilities, I hoped little from these exertions, and was proportionately pleased when, on the third day, he came to me with a radiant face and invited me to attend the Queen that evening.
"The King will be there," he said, "and I shall surprise you. But I will not tell you more. Come! and I promise to satisfy you."
And that was all he would say; so that, finding my questions useless, and the man almost frantic with joy, I had to be content with it; and at the Queen's hour that evening presented myself in her gallery, which proved to be unusually full.
Making my way towards her in some doubt of my reception, I found my worst fears confirmed. She greeted me with a sneering face, and was preparing, I was sure, to put some slight upon me—a matter wherein she could always count on the applause of her Italian servants—when the entrance of the King took her by surprise. He advanced up the gallery with a listless air, and, after saluting her, stood by one of the fireplaces talking to Epernon and La Force. The crowd was pretty dense by this time, and the hum of talk filled the room when, on a sudden, a voice, which I recognised as Bassompierre's, was lifted above it.
"Very well!" he cried gaily, "then I appeal to her Majesty. She shall decide, mademoiselle! No, no; I am not satisfied with your claim!"
The King looked that way with a frown, but the Queen took the outburst in good part. "What is it, M. de Bassompierre?" she said. "What am I to decide?"
"To-day, in the forest, I found a ring, madame," he answered, coming forward. "I told Mademoiselle de la Force of my discovery, and she now claims the ring."
"I once had a ring like it," cried mademoiselle, blushing and laughing.
"A sapphire ring?" Bassompierre answered, holding his hand aloft.
"Yes."
"With three stones?"
"Yes,"
"Precisely, mademoiselle!" he answered, bowing. "But the stones in this ring are not sapphires, nor are there three of them."
There was a great laugh at this, and the Queen said, very wittily, that as neither of the claimants could prove a right to the ring it must revert to the judge.
"In one moment your Majesty shall at least see it," he answered. "But, first, has anyone lost a ring? Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Lost, in the forest, within the last three days, a ring!"
Two or three, falling in with his humour, set up absurd claims to it; but none could describe the ring, and in the end he handed it to the Queen. As he did so his eyes met mine and challenged my attention. I was prepared, therefore, for the cry of surprise which broke from the Queen.
"Why, this is Caterina's!" she cried. "Where is the child?"
Someone pushed forward Mademoiselle Paleotti, sister-in-law to Madame Paleotti, the Queen's first chamberwoman. She was barely out of her teens, and, ordinarily, was a pretty girl; but the moment I saw her dead-white face, framed in a circle of fluttering fans and pitiless, sparkling eyes, I discerned tragedy in the farce; and that M. de Bassompierre was acting in a drama to which only he and one other held the key. The contrast between the girl's blanched face and the beauty and glitter in the midst of which she stood struck others, so that, before another word was said, I caught the gasp of surprise that passed through the room; nor was I the only one who drew nearer.
"Why, girl," the Queen said, "this is the ring I gave you on my birthday! When did you lose it? And why have you made a secret of it?"
Mademoiselle stood speechless; but madame her sister-in-law answered for her. "Doubtless she was afraid that your Majesty would think her careless," she answered.
"I did not ask you!" the Queen rejoined.
She spoke harshly and suspiciously, looking from the ring to the trembling girl. The silence was such that the chatter of the pages in the anteroom could be heard. Still Mademoiselle stood dumb and confounded.
"Well, what is the mystery?" the Queen said, looking round with a little wonder. "What is the matter? It IS the ring. Why do you not own it?"
"Perhaps mademoiselle is wondering where are the other things she left with it!" Bassompierre said in a silky tone. "The things she left at Parlot the verderer's, when she dropped the ring. But she may free her mind; I have them here."
"What do you mean?" the Queen said. "What things, monsieur? What has the girl been doing?"
"Only what many have done before her," Bassompierre answered, bowing to his unfortunate victim, who seemed to be paralysed by terror: "masquerading in other people's clothes. I propose, madame, that, for punishment, you order her to dress in them, that we may see what her taste is."
"I do not understand?" the Queen said.
"Your Majesty will, if Mademoiselle Paleotti will consent to humour us."
At that the girl uttered a cry, and looked round the circle as if for a way of escape; but a Court is a cruel place, in which the ugly or helpless find scant pity. A dozen voices begged the Queen to insist; and, amid laughter and loud jests, Bassompierre hastened to the door, and returned with an armful of women's gear, surmounted by a wig and a feathered hat.
"If the Queen will command mademoiselle to retire and put these on," he said, "I will undertake to show her something that will please her."
"Go!" said the Queen.
But the girl had flung herself on her knees before her, and, clinging to her skirts, burst, into a flood of tears and prayers; while her sister-in-law stepped forward as if to second her, and cried out, in great excitement, that her Majesty would not be so cruel as to—
"Hoity, toity!" said the Queen, cutting her short, very grimly. "What is all this? I tell the girl to put on a masquerade—which it seems that she has been keeping at some cottage—and you talk as if I were cutting off her head! It seems to me that she escapes very lightly! Go! go! and see, you, that you are arrayed in five minutes, or I will deal with you!"
"Perhaps Mademoiselle de la Force will go with her, and see that nothing is omitted," Bassompierre said with malice.
The laughter and applause with which this proposal was received took me by surprise; but later I learned that the two young women were rivals. "Yes, yes," the Queen said. "Go, mademoiselle, and see that she does not keep us waiting."
Knowing what I did, I had by this time a fair idea of the discovery which Bassompierre had made; but the mass of courtiers and ladies round me, who had not this advantage, knew not what to expect—nor, especially, what part M. Bassompierre had in the business—but made most diverting suggestions, the majority favouring the opinion that Mademoiselle Paleotti had repulsed him, and that this was his way of avenging himself. A few of the ladies even taxed him with this, and tried, by random reproaches, to put him at least on his defence; but, merrily refusing to be inveigled, he made to all the same answer that when Mademoiselle Paleotti returned they would see. This served only to whet a curiosity already keen, insomuch that the door was watched by as many eyes as if a miracle had been promised; and even MM. Epernon and Vendome, leaving the King's side, pressed into the crowd that they might see the better. I took the opportunity of going to him, and, meeting his eyes as I did so, read in them a look of pain and distress. As I advanced he drew back a pace, and signed to me to stand before him.