"Ah, ma foi! I confess I am tempted to do so."
"Give in! Women are never so strong as after they are defeated."
"Sire, I hold you to your promise for Dariole when you shall be King of France."
Henry uttered an exclamation of joy.
At the precise moment when this cry escaped the lips of the Béarnais, the Queen of Navarre was replying to the Duc de Guise:
"Noctu pro more—to-night as usual."
Then Henry turned away from Madame de Sauve as happy as the Duc de Guise had been when he left Marguerite de Valois.
An hour after the double scene we have just related, King Charles and the queen mother retired to their apartments. Almost immediately the rooms began to empty; the galleries exhibited the bases of their marble columns. The admiral and the Prince de Condé were escorted home by four hundred Huguenot gentlemen through the middle of the crowd, which hooted as they passed. Then Henry de Guise, with the Lorraine gentlemen and the Catholics, left in their turn, greeted by cries of joy and plaudits of the people.
But Marguerite de Valois, Henry de Navarre, and Madame de Sauve lived in the Louvre.