“Thanks to you, no.”
“How! thanks to me?”
“Certainly. If, instead of refusing to be chief of the League, when you knew it was directed against me, you had accepted, I was ruined. Therefore, when I heard that the king had punished your refusal with imprisonment, I swore to release you, and I have done so.”
“Always so simple-minded,” thought François, “really, it is easy to deceive him.”
“Now for Anjou,” thought the king. “Ah! M. de Guise, I send you a companion you do not want.”
CHAPTER LIII.
THE FRIENDS.
While Paris was in this ferment, Madame de Monsoreau, escorted by her father and two servants, pursued their way to Méridor. She began to enjoy her liberty, precious to those who have suffered. The azure of the sky, compared to that which hung always menacingly over the black towers of the Bastile, the trees already green, all appeared to her fresh and young, beautiful and new, as if she had really come out of the tomb where her father had believed her. He, the old baron, had grown young again. We will not attempt to describe their long journey, free from incidents. Several times the baron said to Diana,—
“Do not fear, my daughter.”