King of Navarre is in love with me, but I know how to distinguish my friends from my enemies. I like those that like me, and detest those that hate me. Otherwise, madame, should I be your daughter?"
Catharine smiled so as to make Marguerite understand that if she had had any suspicion it had vanished.
Moreover, at that instant the arrival of other pilgrims attracted the attention of the august throng.
The Duc de Guise came with a troop of gentlemen all warm still from recent carnage. They escorted a richly decorated litter, which stopped in front of the King.
"The Duchesse de Nevers!" cried Charles IX., "Ah! let that lovely robust Catholic come and receive our compliments. Why, they tell me, cousin, that from your own window you have been hunting Huguenots, and that you killed one with a stone."
The Duchesse de Nevers blushed exceedingly red.
"Sire," she said in a low tone, and kneeling before the King, "on the contrary, it was a wounded Catholic whom I had the good fortune to rescue."
"Good – good, my cousin! there are two ways of serving me: one is by exterminating my enemies, the other is by rescuing my friends. One does what one can, and I am certain that if you could have done more you would!"
While this was going on, the populace, seeing the harmony existing between the house of Lorraine and Charles IX., shouted exultantly:
"Vive le Roi!"
"Vive le Duc de Guise!"
"Vive la Messe!"
"Do you return to the Louvre with us, Henriette?" inquired the queen mother of the lovely duchess.
Marguerite touched her friend on the elbow, and she, understanding the sign, replied:
"No, madame, unless your majesty desire it; for I have business in the city with her majesty the Queen of Navarre."
"And what are you going to do together?" inquired Catharine.
"To see some very rare and curious Greek books found at an old Protestant pastor's, and which have been taken to the Tower of Saint Jacques la Boucherie," replied Marguerite.
"You would do much better to see the last Huguenots flung into the Seine from the top of the Pont des Meuniers," said Charles IX.; "that is the place for all good Frenchmen."
"We will go, if it be your Majesty's desire," replied the Duchesse de Nevers.
Catharine cast a look of distrust on the two young women. Marguerite, on the watch, remarked it, and turning round uneasily, looked about her.
This assumed or real anxiety did not escape Catharine.
"What are you looking for?"
"I am seeking – I do not see" – she replied.
"Whom are you seeking? Who is it you fail to see?"
"La Sauve," said Marguerite; "can she have returned to the Louvre?"
"Did I not say you were jealous?" said Catharine, in her daughter's ear. "Oh, bestia! Come, come, Henriette," she added, shrugging her shoulders, "begone, and take the Queen of Navarre with you."
Marguerite pretended to be still looking about her; then, turning to her friend, she said in a whisper:
"Take me away quickly; I have something of the greatest importance to say to you."
The duchess courtesied to the King and queen mother, and then, bowing low before the Queen of Navarre:
"Will your majesty deign to come into my litter?"
"Willingly, only you will have to take me back to the Louvre."
"My litter, like my servants and myself, are at your majesty's orders."
Queen Marguerite entered the litter, while Catharine and her gentlemen returned to the Louvre just as they had come. But during the route it was observed that the queen mother kept talking to the King, pointing several times to Madame de Sauve, and at each time the King laughed – as Charles IX. laughed; that is, with a laugh more sinister than a threat.
As soon as Marguerite felt the litter in motion, and had no longer to fear Catharine's searching eyes, she quickly drew from her sleeve Madame de Sauve's note and read as follows:
"I have received orders to send to-night to the King of Navarre two keys; one is that of the room in which he is shut up, and the other is the key of my chamber; when once he has reached my apartment, I am enjoined to keep him there until six o'clock in the morning.
"Let your majesty reflect – let your majesty decide. Let your majesty esteem my life as nothing."
"There is now no doubt," murmured Marguerite, "and the poor woman is the tool of which they wish to make use to destroy us all. But we will see if the Queen Margot, as my brother Charles calls me, is so easily to be made a nun of."
"Tell me, whom is the letter from?" asked the Duchesse de Nevers.
"Ah, duchess, I have so many things to say to you!" replied Marguerite, tearing the note into a thousand bits.
CHAPTER XII
MUTUAL CONFIDENCES
"And, first, where are we going?" asked Marguerite; "not to the Pont des Meuniers, I suppose, – I have seen enough slaughter since yesterday, my poor Henriette."
"I have taken the liberty to conduct your majesty" —
"First and foremost, my majesty requests you to forget my majesty – you were taking me" —
"To the Hôtel de Guise, unless you decide otherwise."
"No, no, let us go there, Henriette; the Duc de Guise is not there, your husband is not there."
"Oh, no," cried the duchess, her bright emerald eyes sparkling with joy; "no, neither my husband, nor my brother-in-law, nor any one else. I am free – free as air, free as a bird, – free, my queen! Do you understand the happiness there is in that word? I go, I come, I command. Ah, poor queen, you are not free – and so you sigh."
"You go, you come, you command. Is that all? Is that all the use of liberty? You are happy with only freedom as an excuse!"
"Your majesty promised to tell me a secret."
"Again 'your majesty'! I shall be angry soon, Henriette. Have you forgotten our agreement?"
"No; your respectful servant in public – in private, your madcap confidante, is it not so, madame? Is it not so, Marguerite?"
"Yes, yes," said the queen, smiling.
"No family rivalry, no treachery in love; everything fair, open, and aboveboard! An offensive and defensive alliance, for the sole purpose of finding and, if we can, catching on the fly, that ephemeral thing called happiness."
"Just so, duchess. Let us again seal the compact with a kiss."
And the two beautiful women, the one so pale, so full of melancholy, the other so roseate, so fair, so animated, joined their lips as they had united their
