“The Duc de Guise!”
“Yes, Henri de Guise, Henri le Balfré.”
“A fine king! whom I exile, whom I send to the army.”
“Good! as if you were not exiled to Poland; and La Charité is nearer to the Louvre than Cracow is. Ah, yes, you send him to the army—that is so clever; that is to say, you put thirty thousand men under his orders, ventre de biche! and a real army, not like your army of the League; no, no, an army of bourgeois is good for Henri de Valois, but Henri de Guise must have an army of soldiers—and what soldiers? hardened warriors, capable of destroying twenty armies of the League; so that if, being king in fact, Henri de Guise had the folly one day to wish to be so in name, he would only have to turn towards the capital, and say, ‘Let us swallow Paris, and Henri de Valois and the Louvre at a mouthful,’ and the rogues would do it. I know them.”
“You forget one thing in your argument, illustrious politician.”
“Ah, diable! it is possible! If you mean a fourth king——”
“No; you forget that before thinking of reigning in France, when a Valois is on the throne, it would be necessary to look back and count your ancestors. That such an idea might come to M. d’Anjou is possible; his ancestors are mine, and it is only a question of primogeniture. But M. de Guise!”
“Ah! that is just where you are in error.”
“How so?”
“M. de Guise is of a better race than you think.”