"Your Majesty may reckon on my company," he said; "and I shall be always happy to accompany you wheresoever you may go."
And he threw a sweeping glance around, to see whose brows might be frowning.
Perhaps of all that cortège, the person who was looked at with the greatest curiosity was that motherless son, that kingless king, that Huguenot turned Catholic. His long and marked countenance, his somewhat vulgar figure, his familiarity with his inferiors, which he carried to a degree almost derogatory to a king,—a familiarity acquired by the mountaineer habits of his youth, and which he preserved till his death,—marked him out to the spectators, some of whom cried:
"To mass, Harry, to mass!"
To which Henry replied:
"I attended it yesterday, to-day, and I shall attend it again to-morrow. Ventre saint gris! surely that is sufficient."
Marguerite was on horseback—so lovely, so fresh, so elegant that admiration made a regular concert around her, though it must be confessed that a few notes of it were addressed to her companion, the Duchesse de Nevers, who had just joined her on a white horse so proud of his burden that he kept tossing his head.
"Well, duchess!" said the Queen of Navarre, "what is there new?"
"Why, madame," replied the duchess, aloud, "I know of nothing."
Then in a lower tone: