"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 Ba.s.sompierre"s lodgings, and bid him come to me!"
The King whistled softly, while I, who knew Ba.s.sompierre 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 pa.s.sion 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 Ba.s.sompierre 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 Ba.s.sompierre 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 a.s.sert 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 Ba.s.sompierre 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 a.s.sume, "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 pa.s.sed 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--G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, was the occasion; but, as the farther I left the closet behind me the more instant became the crisis, the present soon rea.s.serted 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 a.s.severated 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. Ba.s.sompierre was not more happy.