LITMIR.BIZ

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you pass from one camp to another."

      "That was a right I acquired, sir, in saving your life."

      "Good, madame; and as when lovers separate, they return all the gifts that have passed between them, I will save your life, in my turn, if ever the need arises, and we shall be quits."

      And the duke bowed and left the room, nor did Marguerite attempt to retain him.

      In the antechamber he found Gillonne, who guided him to the window on the ground floor, and in the fosse he found his page, with whom he returned to the Hôtel de Guise.

      Marguerite, in a dreamy mood, went to the opened window.

      "What a marriage night!" she murmured to herself; "the husband flees from me – the lover forsakes me!"

      At that moment, coming from the Tour de Bois, and going up toward the Moulin de la Monnaie, on the other side of the fosse passed a student, his hand on his hip, and singing:

"SONG

      "Tell me why, O maiden fair,

      When I burn to bite thy hair,

      And to kiss thy rosy lips,

      And to touch thy lovely breast,

      Like a nun thou feign'st thee blest

      In the cloister's sad eclipse?

      "Who will win the precious prize

      Of thy brow, thy mouth, thine eyes —

      Of thy bosom sweet – what lover?

      Wilt thou all thy charms devote

      To grim Pluton when the boat

      Charon rows shall take thee over?

      "After thou hast sailed across,

      Loveliest, then wilt find but loss —

      All thy beauty will decay.

      When I die and meet thee there

      In the shades I'll never swear

      Thou wert once my mistress gay!

      "Therefore, darling, while we live,

      Change thy mind and tokens give —

      Kisses from thy honey mouth!

      Else when thou art like to die

      Thou ’lt repent thy cruelty,

      Filling all my life with drouth!"

      Marguerite listened with a melancholy smile; then when the student's voice was lost in the distance, she shut the window, and called Gillonne to help her to prepare for bed.

      CHAPTER III

      THE POET-KING

      The next day and those that followed were devoted to festivals, balls, and tournaments.

      The same amalgamation continued to take place between the two parties. The caresses and compliments lavished were enough to turn the heads of the most bigoted Huguenots. Père Cotton was to be seen dining and carousing with the Baron de Courtaumer; the Duc de Guise went boating on the Seine with the Prince de Condé. King Charles seemed to have laid aside his usual melancholy, and could not get enough of the society of his new brother-in-law, Henry. Moreover, the queen mother was so gay, and so occupied with embroidery, ornaments, and plumes, that she could not sleep.

      The Huguenots, to some degree contaminated by this new Capua, began to assume silken pourpoints, wear devices, and parade before certain balconies, as if they were Catholics.

      On every side there was such a reaction in favor of the Protestants that it seemed as if the whole court was about to become Protestant; even the admiral, in spite of his experience, was deceived, and was so carried away that one evening he forgot for two whole hours to chew on his toothpick, which he always used from two o'clock, at which time he finished his dinner, until eight o'clock at night, when he sat down to supper.

      The evening on which the admiral thus unaccountably deviated from his usual habit, King Charles IX. had invited Henry of Navarre and the Duc de Guise to sup with him. After the repast he took them into his chamber, and was busily explaining to them the ingenious mechanism of a wolf-trap he had invented, when, interrupting himself, —

      "Isn't the admiral coming to-night?" he asked. "Who has seen him to-day and can tell me anything about him?"

      "I have," said the King of Navarre; "and if your Majesty is anxious about his health, I can reassure you, for I saw him this morning at six, and this evening at seven o'clock."

      "Aha!" replied the King, whose eyes were instantly fixed with a searching expression on his brother-in-law; "for a new-married man, Harry, you are very early."

      "Yes, sire," answered the King of Navarre, "I wished to inquire of the admiral, who knows everything, whether some gentlemen I am expecting are on their way hither."

      "More gentlemen! why, you had eight hundred on the day of your wedding, and fresh ones join you every day. You are surely not going to invade us?" said Charles IX., smiling.

      The Duc de Guise frowned.

      "Sire," returned the Béarnais, "a war with Flanders is spoken of, and I am collecting round me all those gentlemen of my country and its neighborhood whom I think can be useful to your Majesty."

      The duke, calling to mind the pretended project Henry had mentioned to Marguerite the day of their marriage, listened still more attentively.

      "Well, well," replied the King, with his sinister smile, "the more the better; let them all come, Henry. But who are these gentlemen? – brave ones, I trust."

      "I know not, sire, if my gentlemen will ever equal those of your Majesty, or the Duc d'Anjou's, or the Duc de Guise's, but I know that they will do their best."

      "Do you expect many?"

      "Ten or a dozen more."

      "What are their names?"

      "Sire, their names escape me, and with the exception of one, whom Téligny recommended to me as a most accomplished gentleman, and whose name is De la Mole, I cannot tell."

      "De la Mole!" exclaimed the King, who was deeply skilled in the science of genealogy; "is he not a Lerac de la Mole, a Provençal?"

      "Exactly so, sire; you see I recruit even in Provence."

      "And I," added the Duc de Guise, with a sarcastic smile, "go even further than his majesty the King of Navarre, for I seek even in Piedmont all the trusty Catholics I can find."

      "Catholic or Huguenot," interrupted the King, "it little matters to me, so they are brave."

      The King's face while he uttered these words, which thus united Catholics and Huguenots in his thoughts, bore such an expression of indifference that the duke himself was surprised.

      "Your Majesty is occupied with the Flemings," said the admiral, to whom Charles had some days previously accorded the favor of entering without being announced, and who had overheard the King's last words.

      "Ah! here is my father the admiral!" cried Charles, opening his arms. "We were speaking of war, of gentlemen, of brave men – and he comes. It is like the lodestone which attracts the iron. My brother-in-law of Navarre and my cousin of Guise are expecting reinforcements for your army. That was what we were talking about."

      "And these reinforcements are on their way," said the admiral.

      "Have you had news of them?" asked the Béarnais.

      "Yes, my son, and particularly of M. de la Mole; he was at Orléans yesterday, and will be in Paris to-morrow or the day after."

      "The devil! You must be a sorcerer, admiral," said the Duc de Guise, "to know what is taking place at thirty or forty leagues' distance. I should like to know for a certainty what happened or is happening before Orléans."

      Coligny remained unmoved at this savage onslaught, which evidently alluded to the death of François de Guise, the duke's father, killed before Orléans by Poltrot de Méré, and not without a suspicion that the admiral

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