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

must be some magic in it, however, for he is desperately in love with her, though he is not famous for his constancy.”

      “Who, madame?”

      “He, Henry, the accursed — he who is to succeed my three sons — he who shall one day be called Henry IV., and is yet the son of Jeanne d’Albret.”

      And Catharine accompanied these words with a sigh which made Réné shudder, for he thought of the famous gloves he had prepared by Catharine’s order for the Queen of Navarre.

      “So he still runs after her, does he?” said Réné.

      “He does,” replied the queen.

      “I thought that the King of Navarre was quite in love with his wife now.”

      “A farce, Réné, a farce! I know not why, but every one is seeking to deceive me. My daughter Marguerite is leagued against me; perhaps she, too, is looking forward to the death of her brothers; perhaps she, too, hopes to be Queen of France.”

      “Perhaps so,” reechoed Réné, falling back into his own reverie and echoing Catharine’s terrible suspicion.

      “Ha! we shall see,” said Catharine, going to the main door, for she doubtless judged it useless to descend the secret stair, now that she was sure that they were alone.

      Réné preceded her, and in a few minutes they stood in the perfumer’s shop.

      “You promised me some new kind of cosmetic for my hands and lips, Réné; the winter is at hand and you know how sensitive my skin is to the cold.”

      “I have already provided for this, madame; and I shall bring you some tomorrow.”

      “You would not find me in before nine o’clock tomorrow evening; I shall be occupied with my devotions during the day.”

      “I will be at the Louvre at nine o’clock, then, madame.”

      “Madame de Sauve has beautiful hands and beautiful lips,” said Catharine in a careless tone. “What pomade does she use?”

      “For her hands?”

      “Yes, for her hands first.”

      “Heliotrope.”

      “What for her lips?”

      “She is going to try a new opiate of my invention. I was going to bring your majesty a box of it at the same time.”

      Catharine mused an instant.

      “She is certainly a very beautiful creature,” said she, pursuing her secret thoughts; “and the passion of the Béarnais for her is not strange at all.”

      “And she is so devoted to your majesty,” said Réné. “At least I should think so.”

      Catharine smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

      “When a woman loves, is she faithful to any one but her lover? You must have given her some philter, Réné.”

      “I swear I have not, madame.”

      “Well, well; we’ll say no more about it. Show me this new opiate you spoke of, that is to make her lips fresher and rosier than ever.”

      Réné approached a shelf and showed Catharine six small boxes of the same shape, i.e., round silver boxes ranged side by side.

      “This is the only philter she ever asked me for,” observed Réné; “it is true, as your majesty says, I composed it expressly for her, for her lips are so tender that the sun and wind affect them equally.”

      Catharine opened one of the boxes; it contained a most fascinating carmine paste.

      “Give me some paste for my hands, Réné,” said she; “I will take it away with me.”

      Réné took the taper, and went to seek, in a private compartment, what the queen asked for. As he turned, he fancied that he saw the queen quickly conceal a box under her mantle; he was, however, too familiar with these little thefts of the queen mother to have the rudeness to seem to perceive the movement; so wrapping the cosmetic she demanded in a paper bag, ornamented with fleurs-delis:

      “Here it is, madame,” he said.

      “Thanks, Réné,” returned the queen; then, after a moment’s silence: “Do not give Madame de Sauve that paste for a week or ten days; I wish to make the first trial of it myself.”

      And she prepared to go.

      “Your majesty, do you desire me to accompany you?” asked Réné.

      “Only to the end of the bridge,” replied Catharine; “my gentlemen and my litter wait for me there.”

      They left the house, and at the end of the Rue de la Barillerie four gentlemen on horseback and a plain litter were waiting.

      On his return Réné‘s first care was to count his boxes of opiates. One was wanting.

7. The original has à l’aide d’une promenade.

      Chapter 21.

       Madame De Sauve’s Apartment.

       Table of Contents

      Catharine was not deceived in her suspicions. Henry had resumed his former habits and went every evening to Madame de Sauve’s. At first he accomplished this with the greatest secrecy; but gradually he grew negligent and ceased to take any precautions, so that Catharine had no trouble in finding out that while Marguerite was still nominally Queen of Navarre, Madame de Sauve was the real queen.

      At the beginning of this story we said a word or two about Madame de Sauve’s apartment; but the door opened by Dariole to the King of Navarre closed hermetically behind him, so that these rooms, the scene of the Béarnais’s mysterious amours, are totally unknown to us. The quarters, like those furnished by princes for their dependents in the palaces occupied by them in order to have them within reach, were smaller and less convenient than what she could have found in the city itself. As the reader already knows, they were situated on the second floor of the palace, almost immediately above those occupied by Henry himself. The door opened into a corridor, the end of which was lighted by an arched window with small leaded panes, so that even in the loveliest days of the year only a dubious light filtered through. During the winter, after three o’clock in the afternoon, it was necessary to light a lamp, but as this contained no more oil than in summer, it went out by ten o’clock, and thus, as soon as the winter days arrived, gave the two lovers the greatest security.

      A small antechamber, carpeted with yellow flowered damask; a reception-room with hangings of blue velvet; a sleeping-room, the bed adorned with twisted columns and rose-satin curtains, enshrining a ruelle ornamented with a looking-glass set in silver, and two paintings representing the loves of Venus and Adonis — such was the residence, or as one would say nowadays the nest, of the lovely lady-inwaiting to Queen Catharine de Médicis.

      If one had looked sharply one would have found, opposite a toilet-table provided with every accessory, a small door in a dark corner of this room opening into a sort of oratory where, raised on two steps, stood a priedieu. In this little chapel on the wall hung three or four paintings, to the highest degree spiritual, as if to serve as a corrective to the two mythological pictures which we mentioned. Among these paintings were hung on gilded nails weapons such as women carried.

      That evening, which was the one following the scenes which we have described as taking place at Maître Réné‘s, Madame de Sauve, seated in her bedroom on a couch, was telling Henry about her fears and her love, and was giving him as a proof of her love the devotion which she had shown on the famous night following Saint Bartholomew’s, the night which, it will be remembered, Henry spent in his wife’s quarters.

      Henry