The Queen stopped, with a faint and pathetic look of surprise, that showed how rare and perilous were such marks of respect, and Gilbert, his brain in a confusion of pain and pity, heard her say in a voice of ineffable sadness: “What! M. de Saint-Ermay! and are you not gone yet?”
“Never, Madame, while I am free to stay,” answered Louis very low.
The Queen smiled sadly, and then, shaking her head with something of the air of one who indulges a wilful child, she held out her hand, and he kissed it like a relic.
A moment later Gilbert too was bowing low over the same little hand, but of what the Queen said to him, or of what he replied, he heard nothing. Another moment again, and the Galerie de Diane was empty. Himself moved beyond what he could ever have imagined possible, he turned to his cousin. Louis was very pale, and his eyes were sparkling with a rage and devotion alike impotent.
“God damn them all to hell!” he said passionately. “Let us go—I can't bear this place!”
As he followed his cousin down the great staircase, and out into the Cour Royale, Gilbert had the thought, with which he certainly had not entered the Tuileries that morning, that, had he been in Louis’ place, perhaps he too would have refused to leave the sight of that tragic face, the sound of that proud, sad voice.
CHAPTER IX
ET DONA FERENTES
“Peuple Français, peuple intrépide . . .
Entends les cris, vois l’insolence
Des muscadins, amis des rois ;