THE VALOIS SAGA: Queen Margot, Chicot de Jester & The Forty-Five Guardsmen (Historical Novels). Alexandre Dumas

cried La Mole, clasping his hands, “think me not ungrateful; my gratitude will cease only with my life.”

      “It will not last long, then,” said Marguerite, moved at these words, the sincerity of which it was impossible to doubt; “for your wounds will open, and you will die from loss of blood, or you will be recognized for a Huguenot and killed ere you have gone fifty yards in the street.”

      “Nevertheless I must leave the Louvre,” murmured La Mole.

      “Must,” returned Marguerite, fixing her serene, inscrutable eyes upon him; then turning rather pale she added, “ah, yes; forgive me, sir, I understand; doubtless there is some one outside the Louvre who is anxiously waiting for you. You are right, Monsieur de la Mole; it is natural, and I understand it. Why didn’t you say so at first? or rather, why didn’t I think of it myself? It is duty in the exercise of hospitality to protect one’s guest’s affections as well as to cure his wounds, and to care for the spirit just as one cares for the body.”

      “Alas, madame,” said La Mole, “you are laboring under a strange mistake. I am well nigh alone in the world, and altogether so in Paris, where no one knows me. My assassin is the first man I have spoken to in this city; your majesty the first woman who has spoken to me.”

      “Then,” said Marguerite, “why would you go?”

      “Because,” replied La Mole, “last night you got no rest, and to-night”—

      Marguerite blushed.

      “Gillonne,” said she, “it is already evening and time to deliver that key.”

      Gillonne smiled, and left the room.

      “But,” continued Marguerite, “if you are alone in Paris, without friends, what will you do?”

      “Madame, I soon shall have friends enough, for while I was pursued I thought of my mother, who was a Catholic; methought I saw her with a cross in her hand gliding before me toward the Louvre, and I vowed that if God should save my life I would embrace my mother’s religion. Madame, God did more than save my life, he sent me one of his angels to make me love life.”

      “But you cannot walk; before you have gone a hundred steps you will faint away.”

      “Madame, I have made the experiment in the closet, I walk slowly and painfully, it is true; but let me get as far as the Place du Louvre; once outside, let befall what will.”

      Marguerite leaned her head on her hand and sank into deep thought.

      “And the King of Navarre,” said she, significantly, “you no longer speak of him? In changing your religion, have you also changed your desire to enter his service?”

      “Madame,” replied La Mole, growing pale, “you have just hit upon the actual reason of my departure. I know that the King of Navarre is exposed to the greatest danger, and that all your majesty’s influence as a daughter of France will barely suffice to save his life.”

      “What do you mean, sir,” exclaimed Marguerite, “and what danger do you refer to?”

      “Madame,” replied La Mole, with some hesitation, “one can hear everything from the closet where I am.”

      “’Tis true,” said Marguerite to herself; “Monsieur de Guise told me so before.”

      “Well,” added she, aloud, “what did you hear?”

      “In the first place, the conversation between your majesty and your brother.”

      “With François?” said Marguerite, changing color.

      “Yes, madame, with the Duc d’Alençon; and then after you went out I heard what Gillonne and Madame de Sauve said.”

      “And these two conversations”—

      “Yes, madame; married scarcely a week, you love your husband; your husband will come, in his turn, in the same way that the Duc d’Alençon and Madame de Sauve came. He will confide his secrets to you. Well, then, I must not overhear them; I should be indiscreet — I cannot — I must not — I will not be!”

      By the tone in which La Mole uttered these last words, by the anxiety expressed in his voice, by the embarrassment shown in his eyes, Marguerite was enlightened as by a sudden revelation.

      “Aha!” said she, “so you have heard everything that has been said in this room?”

      “Yes, madame.”

      These words were uttered in a sigh.

      “And you wish to depart to-night, this evening, to avoid hearing any more?”

      “This moment, if it please your majesty to allow me to go.”

      “Poor fellow!” said Marguerite, with a strange accent of tender pity.

      Astonished by such a gentle reply when he was expecting a rather forcible outburst, La Mole timidly raised his head; his eyes met Marguerite’s and were riveted as by a magnetic power on their clear and limpid depths.

      “So then you feel you cannot keep a secret, Monsieur de la Mole?” said Marguerite in a soft voice as she stood leaning on the back of her chair, half hidden in the shadow of a thick tapestry and enjoying the felicity of easily reading his frank and open soul while remaining impenetrable herself.

      “Madame,” said La Mole, “I have a miserable disposition: I distrust myself, and the happiness of another gives me pain.”

      “Whose happiness?” asked Marguerite, smiling. “Ah, yes — the King of Navarre’s! Poor Henry!”

      “You see,” cried La Mole, passionately, “he is happy.”

      “Happy?”

      “Yes, for your majesty is sorry for him.”

      Marguerite crumpled up the silk of her purse and smoothed out the golden fringe.

      “So then you decline to see the King of Navarre?” said she; “you have made up your mind; you are decided?”

      “I fear I should be troublesome to his majesty just at the present time.”

      “But the Duc d’Alençon, my brother?”

      “Oh, no, madame!” cried La Mole, “the Duc d’Alençon even still less than the King of Navarre.”

      “Why so?” asked Marguerite, so stirred that her voice trembled as she spoke.

      “Because, although I am already too bad a Huguenot to be a faithful servant of the King of Navarre, I am not a sufficiently good Catholic to be friends with the Duc d’Alençon and Monsieur de Guise.”

      This time Marguerite cast down her eyes, for she felt the very depths of her heart stirred by what he said, and yet she could not have told whether his reply was meant to give her joy or pain.

      At this moment Gillonne came back. Marguerite asked her a question with a glance; Gillonne’s answer, also conveyed by her eyes, was in the affirmative. She had succeeded in getting the key to the King of Navarre.

      Marguerite turned her eyes toward La Mole, who stood before her, his head drooping on his breast, pale, like one suffering alike in mind and in body.

      “Monsieur de la Mole is proud,” said she, “and I hesitate to make him a proposition he will doubtless reject.”

      La Mole rose, took one step toward Marguerite, and was about to bow low before her to signify that he was at her service; but an intense, keen, burning pang forced the tears from his eyes, and conscious that he was in danger of falling, he clutched a piece of tapestry and clung to it.

      “Don’t you see, sir,” cried Marguerite, springing to him and supporting him in her arms, “don’t you see that you still need me?”

      A scarcely perceptible movement passed over La Mole’s lips.

      “Oh, yes!”