"Henry, shall I say one thing to you?" replied Marguerite, gazing earnestly at the duke; "it is that you are more like a schoolboy than a prince. I deny that I have loved you! I desire to quench a flame which will die, perhaps, but the reflection of which will never die! For the loves of persons of my rank illumine and frequently devour the whole epoch contemporary with them. No, no, duke; you may keep the letters of your Marguerite, and the casket she has given you. She asks but one of these letters, and that only because it is as dangerous for you as for herself."
"It is all yours," said the duke. "Take the one that you wish to destroy."
Marguerite searched anxiously in the open casket, and with a tremulous hand took, one after the other, a dozen letters, only the addresses of which she examined, as if by merely glancing at these she could recall to her memory what the letters themselves contained; but after a close scrutiny she looked at the duke, pale and agitated.
"Sir," she said, "what I seek is not here. Can you have lost it, by any accident? for if it should fall into the hands of"—
"What letter do you seek, madame?"
"That in which I told you to marry without delay."
"As an excuse for your infidelity?"
Marguerite shrugged her shoulders.
"No; but to save your life. The one in which I told you that the king, seeing our love and my exertions to break off your proposed marriage with the Infanta of Portugal, had sent for his brother, the Bastard of Angoulême, and said to him, pointing to two swords, 'With this slay Henry de Guise this night, or with the other I will slay thee in the morning.' Where is that letter?"
"Here," said the duke, drawing it from his breast.