'Again I ask you—why folly?'
'Jacqueline is not a foolish child. She is not like to be taken in by so transparent a comedy.'
'It will not be transparent, Messire. Under my guidance the comedy will be exceedingly well acted. Madame Jacqueline will never know that her love-sick swain is the Duke of Anjou.'
'Then 'tis greater folly still!'
'Ah, that I swear it is not!' retorted Marguerite de Navarre hotly. 'Your Jacqueline is not twenty—she is proud and beautiful and romantic. Well! give her some romance and she'll thank you for it presently on her knees.'
'But——' protested de Montigny.
'Is not the whole thing simplicity in itself?' she broke in eagerly. 'The fame of Madame Jacqueline's beauty hath spread far and wide; what more rational than that a noble prince—too insignificant or too poor to enter the lists for her hand—should choose a romantic method to approach her? After all, what are we all striving for? That Monsieur shall see the lovely Jacqueline without her knowing that he proposes to woo her. If, in addition to that, we cause the two young people to fall in love with one another, we shall have done well; whilst, on the other hand, if, after having seen her, Monsieur retires from the candidature, the susceptibilities of the Flemish nation and of Madame Jacqueline will have been safeguarded.'
'How?'
'The unknown prince can vanish as mysteriously as he came. The story can reach Madame Jacqueline's ear that he was found killed by some other jealous swain outside her garden-gate.'
'Folly, Madame! Folly, I say!' protested de Montigny, perhaps a shade less forcibly than he had done before.